Meeting the challenges of modern interceptor guidance by non-conventional approaches
The challenge of intercepting threats with non conventional warheads, the major drive for the development of ballistic missile defense systems since the first Gulf War of 1991, became even more serious when the reentry vehicles were assumed to be capable of maneuvering. Successful interception of such targets, requiring very small miss distances, cannot be guaranteed by the classical guidance and estimation methods that have been used against manned aircraft. Future interceptor guidance strategy has to be based on pursuit-evasion game concepts and the estimator design has to be integrated with the guidance law. Following such non conventional approaches has the potential to achieve the requirement of hit-to-kill accuracy against randomly maneuvering threats.
Integrated estimation/guidance design approach for improved homing against randomly maneuvering targets
Interceptor missiles, designed against aircraft, have substantial speed and maneuverability advantage over their targets. Thus, by exploiting the technological progress, even simple guidance concepts yielded satisfactory performance. For the interception of antisurface missiles, higher guidance precision is required. Using conventional guidance and estimation concepts, existing missile defense systems have demonstrated hit-to-kill accuracy against nonmaneuvering targets. Guaranteeing a similar performance against maneuvering targets can be achieved only if the estimation errors against such targets are minimized. This paper introduces a new, logic-based estimation/ guidance algorithm, that explicitly uses the time-to-go in the estimation process and modifies the guidance law to reduce the consequence of estimation errors. The successful outcome of the new approach is illustrated by an extensive Monte Carlo simulation study.
The distinctiveness of Belfast medicine and its medical school.
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