Design of advanced guidance law against high speed attacking target

An advanced guidance law is developed such that anti-air surface-to-air tactical missiles can effectively defend against very high speed targets, such as ballistic targets. Preliminary studies have shown that the aspect angle of the interceptor at lock-on near 180 degrees is a fundamental requirement for an aerodynamically controlled missile to achieve a small miss distance against a faster target. To meet this geometric constraint, an advanced midcourse guidance law based on optimal trajectory shaping and a neural network correction guidance algorithm is explored. It is shown that the proposed guidance law can offer a near head-on homing condition before the guided missile enters the terminal phase. It is also found that the neural network incorporated with conventional proportional navigation in the terminal phase can significantly extend the defensible region. Results of a simulation study show the effectiveness of our proposed guidance scheme.