Guidance law to improve the accuracy of tactical missiles

Claim 1

A missile guidance system for controlling a missile with canards to strike a target comprising: a missile longitudinal body axis; an inertial-space-fixed reference line; an angle, eta (η) defined as an angle between the inertial-space-fixed reference line and the missile longitudinal body axis; means to measure the angle eta (η) a missile velocity-vector representing the direction of the velocity of the missile; a missile angle of attack alpha (α) defined as an angle between the missile velocity vector and the missile longitudinal body axis; means for measuring the missile angle of attack (α); a missile flight path angle gamma (γ); means to subtract angle eta (η) and angle alpha (α) to form the missile flight path angle gamma (γ); a missile to target line-of-sight; means to measure a pursuit angle epsilon (ξ); defined as the angle between the missile to target line-of-sight and the missile velocity vector; means to form a weighted linear combination R of angle epsilon (ξ) and angle gamma (γ); a control means that functions to automatically move the canards to direct the missile to the target according to the weighted linear combination of epsilon (ξ) and gamma (γ); and means to feed the weighted linear combination of epsilon (ξ) and gamma (γ) to the control means.