Modeling and Simulation of Kinetic Optimal Midcourse Guidance Law for Air-to-Air Missiles

A new kinetic optimal midcourse guidance law is derived based on optimal control formulation. A new simplified Runge-Kutta-Grade numerical method is proposed to solve the optimal trajectory. An air-to-air missile example is used to compare the kinetic optimal midcourse guidance law with both the kinematic optimal guidance law and singular perturbation sub-optimal guidance law. Wherein, the latter two guidance laws are modified by adding vertical g-bias command for the sake of trajectory shaping. The simulation results show that the new kinetic optimal midcourse guidance law can conserve more energy and maximize terminal velocity effectively.