Cooperative Multiple-Model Adaptive Guidance for an Aircraft Defending Missile

A cooperative guidance law, for a defender missile protecting an aerial target from an incoming homing missile, is presented. The filter used is a nonlinear adaptation of a multiple model adaptive estimator, in which each model represents a possible guidance law and guidance parameters of the incoming homing missile. Fusion of measurements from both the defender missile and protected aircraft is performed. A matched defender’s missile guidance law is optimized to the identified homing missile guidance law. It utilizes cooperation between the aerial target and the defender missile. The cooperation stems from the fact that the defender knows the future evasive maneuvers to be performed by the protected target and thus can anticipate the maneuvers it will induce on the incoming homing missile. Moreover, the target performs a maneuver that minimizes the control effort requirements from the defender. The estimator and guidance law are combined in a multiple model adaptive control configuration. Simulation results show that combining the estimations with the proposed optimal guidance law, that utilizes cooperation between the defending missile and protected target, yields hit-to-kill closed loop performance with very low control effort. This facilitates the use of relatively small defending missiles to protect aircrafts from homing missiles.