Design of an aerial combat guidance law using virtual pursuit point concept

Abstract

In this paper, a combat maneuvering guidance law for an unmanned combat aerial vehicle is presented, and X-Plane based nonlinear six-degrees-of-freedom combat simulation results are presented. For realizing practical implementation and good real-time performance, the guidance law is designed using the virtual pursuit point concept and a typical pure pursuit guidance law. The virtual pursuit points, which include virtual lag, pure, and lead points, are generated based on energy–maneuverability analysis for turn performance, weapon characteristics, and basic fighter maneuver principles of manned fighters. Furthermore, an algorithm is proposed for generating a single point using the virtual pursuit points and for determining the type of pursuit maneuver using the vehicle’s state-based probabilistic functions. The simulation results indicate that the proposed guidance law produces sensible maneuvers for close air-to-air engagement. The proposed methodology has the advantage of not only allowing wide-ranging combat maneuvers from high-g agile to delicate gunshot maneuvers but also performing tactical pursuit maneuvers in real time using the virtual pursuit point.