A midcourse guidance law for missiles with Thrust Vector Control

A nonlinear missile guidance controller with Thrust Vector Control (TVC) inputs for the interception of a theater ballistic missile is presented. In this paper, the midcourse phase of the missile is investigated, during which many non-ideal conditions must be considered, such as variation of the inertia of the missile and existence of the aerodynamic force, and an effect controller is designed to take into account the properties of TVC. Specifically, a 3 DOF optimal midcourse guidance law is designed to minimize the control effort and the distance between the missile and the target. The asymptotic stability of the overall system is proved by Lyapunov theory. Extensive simulations are conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed guidance law for TVC