A new guidance law for a tactical surface-to-surface missile

Abstract

Modern tactical surface-to-surface missiles, equipped with strapdown inertial navigation systems, achieve very good accuracy compared with free-flight rockets. The probable range dispersion mainly depends on instruments errors and longitudinal disturbances such as rocket motor total-impulse deviation as well as differences between the estimated and actual values of the axial force and head wind. This paper gives an extension of the correlated velocity concept for surface-to-surface missiles without a thrust-terminating mechanism. The calculated parameters of the correlated velocity are stored into the memory of an onboard guidance computer. On the basis of the correlated velocity concept, the modified proportional navigation with the adjustment of the time-to-go of the missile to the target was proposed. It is shown that the new guidance law can compensate for the longitudinal disturbances of different levels successfully. The effectiveness of the proposed guidance method was confirmed by means of the calculated probable range and lateral dispersion for the anticipated disturbances in the guidance system.

Keywords

• guidance law
• surface-to-surface missile
• correlated velocity
• proportional navigation
• 'six-degree-of-freedom' model