On optimal missile avoidance - a comparison between optimal control and differential game solutions

Optimal missile avoidance is an important element of aircraft survivability in a future air combat. If the missile guidance law and its parameters are known, the best avoidance maneuver is the solution of an optimal control problem. In the absence of such information a zero-sum pursuit-evasion differential game has to be solved. The game solution yields an optimal missile guidance law as well as an optimal evasive strategy. Recent studies have shown that the respective optimal missile avoidance maneuvers, derived using these two formulations, have substantially different structures. In the present paper the origin of this difference is explained and the performance achieved by the structurally different maneuvers is compared.