Six-Degree-of-Freedom Digital Simulations for Missile Guidance, Navigation, and Control

This article presents a brief history of missile simulations and a discussion of the programming languages and paradigms used for developing them. Evolving language and programming paradigms elicit requirements for new simulation architectures. Within this execution framework, engineering-level guidance, navigation, and control simulations must include certain functional modules to capture the performance characteristics of the missile system. The level of model sophistication required depends on the particular engineering question to be answered. Six-degree-of-freedom simulations are effective tools for cost and risk reduction during the development and deployment of missile systems.