Enhanced Air-to-Air Missile Tracking Using Target Orientation Observations

Abstract

State-of-the-art short-range air-to-air missiles derive their superior interception performance mainly from highly advanced aerodynamic configuration design, agile seekers, and highly efficient fragmentation warheads, but use only relatively basic information on the state of the target. Recent advances in onboard computing and imaging technologies render the expansion of this information base feasible, thus enabling the use of advanced guidance laws. Employing both analysis and computer simulations, this work investigates the idea of enhancing the missile's interception performance by utilizing information on target orientation, acquired in real time by an imaging sensor. Three trackers, including two extended Kalman filters and an interacting multiple model filter, are designed and run in open-loop and closed-loop scenarios to assess and demonstrate the performance enhancement achievable by using the new information. Both proportional navigation and differential-game-based guidance laws are used and compared. The study shows that a great improvement in interception performance can be expected when implementing the proposed concept. Whereas in the case of a missile not exploiting the information on the target's orientation, the required warhead should possess an effective operational radius exceeding 5 m (for the given scenario parameters) even with the advanced, differential-game-based guidance law (and significantly larger with the proportional navigation law); when the new information is used an almost hit-to-kill performance is achieved.