Differential game strategy in three-player evasion and pursuit scenarios

A conflict of three players, including an attacker, a defender, and a target with bounded control is discussed based on the differential game theories in which the target and the defender use an optimal pursuit strategy. The current approach chooses the miss distance as the outcome of the conflict. Different optimal guidance laws are investigated, and feasible conditions are analyzed for the attacker to accomplish an attacking task. For some given conditions, the attacker cannot intercept the target by only using a one-to-one optimal pursuit guidance law; thus, a guidance law for the attacker to reach a critical safe value is investigated. Specifically, the guidance law is divided into two parts. Before the engagement time between the defender and the attacker, the attacker uses this derived guidance law to guarantee that the evasion distance from the defender is safe, and that the zero-effort-miss (ZEM) distance between the attacker and the target is the smallest. After that engagement time, the attacker uses the optimal one-toone guidance law to accomplish the pursuit task. The advantages and limited conditions of these derived guidance laws are also investigated by using nonlinear simulations.