High angle of attack flight control using stochastic model reference adaptive control

High angle of attack flight control is of utmost importance to military aircraft in air combat maneuvering. Flight in this regime have in recent years caused many high performance aircraft to be lost due to departure of the aircraft. The aerodynamics in this regime are highly nonlinear. The problem is compounded by the fact that the aerodynamics are not well known. This paper considers the use of adaptive control in order to perform model following of an "ideal" aircraft in the presence of uncertain aerodynamic coefficients. In particular, the partitioning approach of adaptive control is extended to the implicit model following problem. This is then used to solve the problem of high angle of attack flight control.