The U.S. Air Force has asked for industry input to begin defining the alternative payloads that the service may pursue in place of buying a full complement of Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) High missile launch warning satellites.

A program research and development announcement issued July 7 by the Air Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) calls on industry to provide white papers by July 24 describing innovative concepts for the Alternate Infrared Satellite System (AIRSS) and then technical and cost proposals for maturing them by Sept. 6, sister publication Defense Daily reported.

SMC said it wants to decide by Oct. 26 which proposals it will sponsor and anticipates awarding the first contracts before the end of the year. "It is the government’s desire to maximize the number of industry participants in the AIRSS … effort," SMC said.

The center said it has allocated $70 million to fund a three-phase period of activities that will help it decide by a so-called "key decision point" in December 2007 whether to proceed with the initiative. If so, the Air Force may award an AIRSS system development contract in mid 2008 that would enable the first launch of a spacecraft by 2015, according to SMC. The center noted that there will be "full and open" competition for the system development contract.

The Air Force decided in December 2005 to assemble a competing space-based early warning sensor program to SBIRS High in the wake of the technical difficulties that the latter program has experienced, which have seen its costs balloon and schedule slip by years.

SBIRS High satellites are the planed successors to the Defense Support Program early warning spacecraft. Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor and systems integrator, while Northrop Grumman manufactures the satellites’ sensors.

AIRSS, whose primary mission, like that of SBIRS High, would be to provide uninterrupted on-orbit strategic and tactical missile warning and support missile defense, is seen as insurance measure in case SBIRS High suffers more setbacks. Depending on SBIRS High’s status in several years, as well as the availability of funding, the Air Force may opt to go with AIRSS instead of buying from one to three SBIRS High production-version satellites from Lockheed Martin.

SMC has said it has a requirement for at least four Defense Support Program-replacement satellites, whether they are all SBIRS High spacecraft or a mix of SBIRS and AIRSS.

Lockheed Martin already is manufacturing two developmental-version SBIRS High satellites destined for geosynchronous orbit, with the launch of the first expected around 2009. The company already has supplied a SBIRS ground processing and control segment and built two SBIRS High sensor payloads that will be resident on two classified satellites that will operate in highly elliptical orbits.

"The intent there is to provide a competing solution to the third [geosynchronous] SBIRS satellite payload," Maj. Gen. Mark Shackelford, Air Force Space Command’s director of requirements, said of AIRSS in late June, during a meeting with reporters in Keystone, Colo. "… The schedule that is in place would support that decision process. What remains to be seen is whether the funding that comes along is part of the 07 and 08 budget decisions, which are still very much in the pre-decisional point, will support that schedule. What we have is a lot of competing priorities for funds," he said.

SMC said the AIRSS project "will pursue an approach with acceptable technical risk that offers [Defense Support Program]-like missile warning capability while ensuring a launch availability date by FY 15."

The center said it wants industry to "create a viable low-risk and affordable space system design" and "identify key enabling technologies, assess ground system trades, analyze the [technical requirements document] and allocate requirements to subsystems, and identify risk areas and major cost trades."

The center also wants bidders to evaluate the applicability of AIRSS geosynchronous payloads to highly elliptical orbit and define a ground system concept for spacecraft and mission payload control, mission data processing, and interfaces with the existing Defense Support Program/SBIRS infrastructure. SMC said it is considering conducting AIRSS operations with the SBIRS ground control infrastructure or establishing a separate control facility that would be integrated with the SBIRS architecture.

–Michael Sirak