Meeting the challenges of modern interceptor guidance by non-conventional approaches

The challenge of intercepting threats with non conventional warheads, the major drive for the development of ballistic missile defense systems since the first Gulf War of 1991, became even more serious when the reentry vehicles were assumed to be capable of maneuvering. Successful interception of such targets, requiring very small miss distances, cannot be guaranteed by the classical guidance and estimation methods that have been used against manned aircraft. Future interceptor guidance strategy has to be based on pursuit-evasion game concepts and the estimator design has to be integrated with the guidance law. Following such non conventional approaches has the potential to achieve the requirement of hit-to-kill accuracy against randomly maneuvering threats.