ORLANDO, FL.-As part of the Pentagon’s continuing plans to shore up a coherent development strategy for a new space surveillance system and launch a demonstration satellite by 2008, the Air Force is establishing a program executive office for the Space Based Radar (SBR) program.

The Pentagon’s plans to develop a persistent satellite system that can perform moving target indication for tactical military users and acquire imagery required by the intelligence community has been plagued throughout the years by several false starts and internal bickering. But acting Air Force Secretary Peter Teets, who also serves as the head of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), said this time he is establishing the management structures to move things ahead.

“We are determined to go forward with a new technology space radar system that will serve the needs of both [the intelligence and military] communities,” Teets said recently. “It will be a single system that can do synthetic aperture imaging and moving target indication.” His comments were first reported by sister publication Defense Daily.

SBR has in the past encountered considerable opposition from Capitol Hill and, last year, Congress gutted its budget and ordered the Air Force to restructure the program. At issue was the Pentagon’s inability to articulate a program that could resolve the requirements of the military users with those of the intelligence community.

Teets told reporters that several recent events moved the program forward, however. First was a summit held last fall that included representatives from SBR’s various intelligence and military users. That was followed by a memo signed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and CIA Director Porter Goss on the future direction of the SBR program.

As a result of that memo, Teets said, “we have decided the right way to move out on this is to establish a program executive office in Washington.”

Air Force Brig. Gen. Tom Sheridan will head the office and an NRO official will serve as his deputy, according to Teets. Another part of the new strategy is an ambitious plan to launch into low earth orbit a smaller demonstration version of the operational system.

“We will launch an operational demonstration satellite before the end of 2008,” Teets said.

One open question will be how the overhaul of the intelligence community could affect the SBR program. Teets said he thought the new national intelligence director– recently named as John Negroponte–would be “highly interested” in SBR, but would not interfere in the new plan.

The new director, who still faces Senate confirmation, will want to understand what is taking place, Teets said, “but I do not see that upsetting the applecart.”

The FY ’06 defense-spending request includes $226 million for SBR, with an additional $4.2 billion earmarked through FY ’11. Officials are targeting 2015 for first launch of an operational satellite.

As part of the restructuring, the program will be called the Space Radar surveillance system.

The Air Force is currently funding research work on the program under separate, $220 million contracts with teams led by Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.

–By Sharon Weinberger