Agencies such as NASA, NOAA, ESA and the IPO have made compelling cases for a space–based Doppler wind lidar. OSSEs at NOAA/NCEP, NOAA/FSL and NASA/GSFC have persistently indicated significant impacts on global and regional scale forecast models. The OSSEs have, to date, evaluated generic or technology neutral lidar concepts. Independent studies within government laboratories and by private companies have been conducted to evaluate specific lidar technologies and configurations. Today there are three notional Doppler Wind Lidar (DWL) concepts for global wind observations: 1) a direct detection lidar only that would be designed to use both the molecular and aerosol returns to obtain full tropospheric profiles of the horizontal wind; 2) a coherent detection only lidar that would also be designed for full tropospheric coverage (would have to use the global background mode of aerosol backscatter for its design point); and 3) a hybrid lidar that would use direct molecular for the cloud-free mid and upper troposphere and coherent detection for cloudy scenes and the lower troposphere. Currently the hybrid approach is being considered by the DoD and a NASA/NOAA technology roadmap as the preferred method. The hybrid approach capitalizes on the strengths of both the direct and coherent technologies while promising to be smaller, less power consuming and, hopefully, less costly than a single technology approach. This paper will describe the hybrid concept and present some recent trade studies involving OSSE-like efforts.