Nonorthodox guidance law development approach for intercepting maneuvering targets

Two aspects of a new mindset are applied to interceptor guidance: 1) the mathematical formulation or an interception scenario against maneuverable targets and 2) the relationship between the estimation process and optimal guidance law design. The interception of a maneuverable antisurface missile is formulated as a zero-sum pursuit evasion game. The perfect information game solution, which guarantees a robust hit-to-kill homing accuracy, requires, among other things, the knowledge of the target maneuver. This variable cannot be directly measured and has to be estimated based on noisy measurements. The greatest error source in the estimation of time-varying target maneuvers is the inherent delay due to the convergence time of the process. The estimation process is modeled as a pure information delay. Such a delay is partially compensated by a new guidance law based on the solution of a delayed information pursuit-evasion game. The new approach represents a potential breakthrough in guidance law design predicting reduced miss distances and robustness even in stressing interception environments. The improved accuracy is confirmed by a set of Monte Carlo simulations in a ballistic missile interception scenario with noisy measurements.