Precision munition guidance and moving-target estimation

The efficacy of a munition depends on target detection, estimation of its motion, guidance, tracking and control; in fact even more so if the target is moving. This paper is concerned with flight dynamics of a munition in atmosphere under four different guidance schemes to intercept an evasive ground target. The miss distances and commanded acceleration required by these guidance laws are compared. Two-dimensional planar flight of the munition and its pitch motion model is developed and simulated. The forward and/or backward motion of a target tank on the ground is modeled as a second-order Gauss–Markov process. To estimate the target location on the ground and the line-of-sight rate to intercept it, an Extended Kalman filter is composed whose state vector consists of cascaded state vectors of missile dynamics and target dynamics. The line-of-sight angle measurement from the infrared seeker and range measurement from the millimeter wave radar are used in the Kalman Filter for relative navigation of the mu...