Coverage-based cooperative guidance strategy against highly maneuvering target

Considering highly maneuvering target, a novel cooperative guidance strategy, which aims to make multiple missiles' joint reachable sets cover the target evasion region, is proposed. The assumed engagement scenario is that multiple missiles separate with each other at the beginning of homing phase and then cooperatively intercept the highly maneuvering target which cannot be intercepted by single missile due to insufficient maneuverability. Firstly, for biasing the reachable sets of different missiles to cover different subintervals of target maneuvering range as expected, a biased proportional navigation guidance law (BPN) is designed by introducing the virtual aiming point. Secondly, for the missile-team without communication capability, the minimum relative maneuverability superiority and minimum team size for covering the whole target maneuvering range are derived based on the BPN respectively, and one open-loop cooperative guidance strategy is proposed with an acceptable assumption about the handover errors of midcourse guidance. While for the missile-team with communication capability, a novel coordinating variable is designed and the corresponding closed-loop guidance strategy is proposed. Numerical simulations with different target maneuver modes are presented to verify the guidance performance of the proposed cooperative guidance strategy.