Cooperative Active Aircraft Protection Guidance Using Line-of-Sight Approach

This article proposes sliding-mode-control-based guidance strategies for a team comprised of aircraft and a defending interceptor against an attacker. The proposed guidance strategies are based on the line-of-sight guidance concept. Problems such as performance degradation under large heading angle errors, arising from linearization of engagement dynamics, are circumvented due to the nonlinear framework considered here. We show that knowledge of the bound on attacker acceleration suffices to ensure interception of an attacking interceptor. Cooperative strategies are derived for the aircraft-defender team, corresponding to cost functions based on the l(p) norm, using static optimization at each time instant. Simulations validate the efficacy of the proposed strategies.

Automated summary

This article proposes sliding-mode-control-based guidance strategies for a team consisting of aircraft and a defending interceptor against an attacker, based on the line-of-sight guidance concept. The nonlinear framework considered helps circumvent performance degradation under large heading angle errors. The knowledge of the bound on attacker acceleration is shown to be sufficient to ensure interception of an attacking interceptor.