Boost-Phase Intercept Guidance Using Detection Methods

In boost-phase missile defense, ballistic missile threats are intercepted prior to termination of powered flight. One concept is to position radars close to the potential threat and to engage the threat missile while still in the boost phase. Certain boosting threats may be capable of utilizing their excess energy to fly a less predictable path, which are a countermeasure to interception during this phase of flight. Our focus is on the estimation of the state of the ICBM threat when its acceleration is used to complicate the tracking solution and the development of terminal homing guidance laws that hedge against the possibilities of random jumps in the ICBM''''s thrust profile. The estimator is based on two important developments. First, although the dynamic model is assumed linear in a Cartesian frame and the measurements are linear in a spherical coordinate frame, the measurement residual functions can be written as a universal linearization in the Cartesian frame. Secondly, based on this linear structure, model-based fault detection filters are applied to the detection of the random jumps in the ICBM''''s thrust profile. This effort will be performed by SySense researchers under the review and guidance of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.