V3I1P10

Optimal Guidance Law Design for Air-to-Air Missiles Intercepting Slow and Highly Maneuverable Targets

Nguyen Ngoc Thien¹

Abstract

This paper presents the design of an optimal guidance law for air-to-air missiles (AAMs) engaging slow and highly maneuverable aerial targets, such as helicopters or unmanned aerial vehicles. Unlike conventional proportional navigation (PN), which is optimized for high-speed targets, the proposed approach explicitly accounts for target maneuverability and low-speed kinematic characteristics. An optimal control formulation is established to minimize miss distance while constraining missile acceleration. The resulting guidance law is derived analytically and implemented in a closed-loop form. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the proposed method significantly improves interception performance compared with classical PN under aggressive target maneuvers.

Keywords:

Air-to-air missile, optimal guidance, slow maneuvering targets, proportional navigation, optimal control.