Non-orthodox guidance law development approach for the interception of maneuvering anti-surface missiles

The paper concentrates on two aspects of a new mind setting applied to interceptor guidance: (i) the mathematical formulation of intercepting highly maneuverable targets and (ii) the relationship between the estimation process and optimal guidance law design. The interception of a maneuverable anti-surface 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 (inter alia) the knowledge of the target maneuver. This variable cannot be directly measured and has to be estimated, based on noise corrupted 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, hi this paper the estimation process of the target maneuver is modeled by a pure information delay. Based on this model a new guidance law, compensating for the delay, is developed. This non-orthodox approach represents a potential breakthrough in guidance law design predicting reduced miss distances and robustness even in stressing interception environments. The improved accuracy was confirmed by a set of Monte Carlo simulations in a noise corrupted interception scenario.