Intelligent flight management in threat environments

An integrated threat localization and avoidance methodology is proposed for intelligent control of unmanned air vehicles and pilot advisory systems in manned aircraft operating in a threat environment. Passive threat-warning techniques are used to maintain electronic silence of the vehicle. Aircraft trajectories which are optimal with respect to time, fuel, risk, and final position are generated with a priori information and provided to a localization algorithm which identifies the position of an emitting threat to within a known maximum area of uncertainty. The method adapts throughout the mission to uncertain a priori information by providing increasingly more accurate threat location estimates and updated optimal flight trajectories