Aiming point guidance law for air-to-air missiles

A new aiming point guidance (APG) law is presented which generates a missile turn rate command proportional to the heading error, that is defined as the angle between the current missile heading and predicted aiming point. The target under consideration is assumed to be manoeuvring with constant longitudinal and/or lateral accelerations, and the missile dynamics are modelled as an acceleration-limited first-order lag point mass. The aiming point is calculated based on current intercept geometry and target velocity and position. Time-to-go, a key factor for successful interception, is estimated by a time-to-go predictor. With the heading error defined as stated above, the guidance law can guide the missile into the collision course in the early stage of the engagement. As a consequence, the later part of the missile trajectory tends to be a straight line, provided that the target maintains its current status. The performance of the proposed APG is evaluated by simulation and is compared with the proportion...