Precision Munition Guidance and Moving Target Position Estimation

What is it about?

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 the flight dynamics of a munition in the 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-ofsight rate to intercept it, an ExtendedKalmanfilter 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 munition. With navigation errors amidst sensor measurement noise, the miss distance of the munition is 1.03 m. It is capable of hitting the target with high accuracy as well as minimizing the lateral acceleration demand.

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Photo by Curioso Photography on Unsplash

Photo by Curioso Photography on Unsplash

Why is it important?

PGMs are smart weapons that work in a fire-and-forget mode and have very low collateral damage. The integration of navigation, guidance, and control offers the potential to improve a PGM’s performance. The sensor data integration will improve the probability of target detection, target classification, and target identification, reducing the number of munitions required to disable a target.