Intercept Point Prediction for Midcourse Guidance of Anti-Ballistic Missile

Interception of the ballistic missile is one of the most challenging issue in the missile defense system. Except the powered phase intercept, the speed of the ballistic missile is usually much faster than that of the intercept missile. Therefore, hit-to-kill and head-on interception is necessary to increase kill probability. These conditions require a precise guidance scheme. This study focuses on the exo-atmospheric midcourse guidance for the solid propellant missile against the ballistic target in the free flight phase. Due to the characteristics of the solid propellant, the achievable intercept area is limited, and the performance of the guidance is highly affected by the predicted intercept point(PIP). In this study, the range of the achievable PIP is obtained by the trajectory optimization technique, and the proper PIP selection scheme is proposed to intercept the target. Numerical simulations are conducted to demonstrate the performance of the PIP selection for the midcourse guidance.