Estimation of Missile Flight Distance and Guidance Law during Boost Phase

In this paper, the new equation for estimating the missile flight distance during boost phase is presented and applied to the guidance law for the missile. First, the equation is obtained assuming the zero-lift drag coefficient is constant. The simulation results show that the equation gives the far better estimation than the previous one. Second, applying the equation to computing the future intercept point with a target, we obtain the collision course. Then, the new guidance law that makes the missile fly on the course is developed. Finally, we performed some simulations and verified that the guidance law presented is easy to design and has good performance if the initial heading angle error is small.