Design of an aerial combat guidance law using virtual pursuit point concept

Abstract

In this paper, a combat maneuvering guidance law for an unmanned combat aerial vehicle is presented, and X-Plane based nonlinear six-degrees-of-freedom combat simulation results are presented. For realizing practical implementation and good real-time performance, the guidance law is designed using the virtual pursuit point concept and a typical pure pursuit guidance law. The virtual pursuit points, which include virtual lag, pure, and lead points, are generated based on energy-maneuverability analysis for turn performance, weapon characteristics, and basic fighter maneuver principles of manned fighters. Furthermore, an algorithm is proposed for generating a single point using the virtual pursuit points and for determining the type of pursuit maneuver using the vehicle's state-based probabilistic functions. The simulation results indicate that the proposed guidance law produces sensible maneuvers for close air-to-air engagement. The proposed methodology has the advantage of not only allowing wide-ranging combat maneuvers from high-g agile to delicate gunshot maneuvers but also performing tactical pursuit maneuvers in real time using the virtual pursuit point.