Multi-Sensor Fire Control System for Tracking Highly Maneuverable Targets

Recent advances in aeronautical design and development has contributed to a significant increase in the vulnerability of the warfighter’s land and sea-based assets from threat-targets exhibiting unpredictable, high-dynamic motion, evasive control, and countermeasure usage. The primary defensive strategy against these targets is a fire control radar system. These systems typically use a single sensor Kalman filter based solution to estimate a three-dimensional target kinematic state. Unfortunately, this solution is inadequate for tracking hyper-maneuverable targets due to the unobservability of the target dynamics (i.e., acceleration) during the maneuver. More data from other sensors is needed to properly track these highly maneuverable targets. Creating a multi-sensor fire control system has the potential to generate more accurate target kinematic estimates by fusing coincident data from secondary sensors with data from the primary fire control radar.