Integrated guidance and control for homing missiles

The need to engage and negate highly maneuverable threats imposes stringent performance requirements on missile interceptors. The design challenges are significant and require advances in interceptor airframe, sensor and propulsion systems, and guidance and control (G&C) algorithms. In essence, the G&C algorithms must orchestrate the various interceptor components to maximize lethality across the threat space. To this end, traditional G&C designs use a decoupled architecture involving three discrete algorithms. Separate designs and weak functional interactions among the algorithms make interceptor performance optimization difficult. In this article, we introduce an alternate G&C architecture wherein the traditional elements are replaced by a single component that performs all three functions. This integrated G&C (IGC) paradigm facilitates a level of synergism between flight control and guidance functions that is difficult to emulate within a decoupled framework. Moreover, the IGC design process unifies interceptor performance optimization versus the decoupled approach. Using a six-degree-of-freedom simulation tool, we compare a prototype IGC algorithm to a benchmark G&C system using a decoupled structure. We show that the IGC concept significantly improves the mean arid standard deviation of the final miss distance against stressing threats.