IMPACT-TIME-CONTROL GUIDANCE LAWS FOR COOPERATIVE ATTACK OF MULTIPLE MISSILES

Two major simultaneous attack strategies have been introduced, as one of cooper- ative attack of multiple missiles. One strategy is an undesignated time attack, in which the mis- siles communicate among themselves to synchronize the arrival times by reducing the mutual differences of times-to-go of multiple missiles during the homing. The other is a designated time attack, in which a common impact time is commanded to all members in advance, and thereafter each missile tries to home on the target on time independently. For this individual homing, Impact-Time-Control Guidance (ITCG) law is required. After introducing coopera- tive proportional navigation (CPN) for the first strategy, this article presents a new closed-form ITCG guidance solution for the second strategy. It is based on the linear formulation, employ- ing base trajectories driven by PNG with various navigation constants. Nonlinear simulation of several engagement situations demonstrates the performance and feasibility of the proposed ITCG law.