Integrated Design of Agile Missile Guidance and Control Systems

Recent threat assessments by the Navy have indicated the need for improving the accuracy of ship defense missiles. This objective can only be achieved by enhancing the performance of the missile subsystems. Traditional approach for missile guidance and control systems has been to design these subsystems separately and then integrate them together before verifying their performance. If any performance deficiencies are observed, the subsystems specifications are revised, and then redesigned. Such an approach does not exploit any synergistic relationships between these and other subsystems. Emerging sensor technologies and multi-actuator blending logics may provide additional opportunities for synergistic design. This proposal advances the development of integrated system design methods for missile fuze/warhead, seeker, guidance, and control systems. Proposed approaches are based on the emerging theories of decentralized control, centralized control synthesis with partitioning, and the method of multiple time-scales. Nonlinear multivariable autopilot synthesis techniques, advanced guidance laws, and multiple non-collocated actuator blending logics developed under previous research efforts will be used as the building blocks for developing integrated design methodologies. Phase I research will demonstrate the integrated design of guidance and control systems for a ship defense missile. Phase II work will include the integrated design of fuze/warhea subsystem with the guidance and control systems for the Navy STANDARD missile using a detailed six degree of freedom missile model. Distributed optimization of the interacting subsystems in the integrated system will be demonstrated. The ability of the integrated weapon guidance to achieve direct hit accuracy on selected parts of the target body at favorable geometries will also be demonstrated. The issues involved in real-time implementation of the algorithms in a missile borne computer will also be analyzed during Phase II research.