Intercepting Boosting Missile Threats With Maneuver Capability

This Phase I study proposes to address the objective of improving interceptor missile performance against boosting missile threats by improving the guidance law. This improvement in performance will be sought by applying a new concept for interceptorguidance specifically tailored to interception of ballistic missiles in their boost phase. This concept incorporates a booster classification function which provides access to a priori information about the fly-out characteristics of the booster typeswhich are likely to be used in a given theater of operations. To this nominal fly-out data is added a general-purpose Markov model to represent maneuvers about the nominal which the booster may be exercising. The performance of the resulting interceptorguidance system is evaluated against non-maneuvering threats as a baseline, and against boosters performing both arbitrary jinking maneuvers and maneuvers which have been optimized against the steering law used by the interceptor guidance system. There is a clear national need for an effective approach to defense against ballistic missile attack. This program will study an innovative concept for guiding hit-to-kill interceptors against missiles in boost phase. The possibility of boostersperforming maneuvers to evade interception will be specifically accounted for in the proposed intercept guidance system. We anticipate improved intercept performance as a result of this work.