Application of angle-only track to ballistic missile defense

Results are presented of an analysis of angle-only track in a ballistic missile defense (BMD) adjunct role. It is demonstrated that a ballistic trajectory is observable with an angle-only sensor mounted on an observation platform moving on a ballistic trajectory when the proper tracking filter is used to minimize the effects of observational bias. Results are shown on initialization of the angle-only filter using both deterministic schema and external satellite data and sensitivity to initial error is discussed. Possible uses of the method are given for BMD application.