A Guidance law for interception of very high-speed targets using a simulator-based learning algorithm

In this paper, the problem of intercepting very high-speed non-maneuvering ballistic targets is addressed and a novel guidance law to enhance the probability of ‘hit to kill’ is designed. The most important challenges which arise in the interception of high-speed ballistic targets include high closing velocity resulting in the lack of time for the final reaction, low radar cross section and high noise power resulting in the lack of precise detection of target track until the last moments and considerable time constant in the order of final interception phase time. By ignoring some of these important challenges, existing guidance laws show great degradation in practice. In this paper we propose a twofold technique to overcome the challenges: a staggered missile team to share the target detection information and a feedforward static guidance input. The amplitude of static guidance is deduced through a regression model using a simulator software. Simulation of the proposed guidance law on a high precision model shows the efficiency of the method.