Course Synopsis
Whether you work in the tactical world or the strategic world, this 5 day course will help you understand and appreciate the unique challenges of each. So everyone can clearly understand the principles of both tactical and strategic missile guidance, concepts are derived mathematically, explained from a heuristic perspective, and illustrated with numerical examples. You will find out why missile guidance is not a minor engineering detail and you will discover how to use course source code effectively. Course mathematics and examples are nonintimidating.

Key Topics

• Interceptor guidance system technology.
• How subsystems influence total system performance.
• Useful design relationships for rapid guidance system sizing.
• Using adjoints to analyze missile guidance systems.
• Innovative methods for improving system performance.
• Common design pitfalls and their engineering fixes.
• Why ballistic missiles and boosters are challenging targets.
• Optimal guidance laws for improving performance against weaving targets.
• Missile control without moving parts.

Course Outline

• Numerical Techniques
  • Numerical integration and using course source code effectively
• Fundamentals of Tactical Missile Guidance
  • Proportional navigation and important closed-form solutions and their utility
• Method of Adjoints and the Homing Loop
  • How adjoints are used to analyze missile guidance systems
• Noise Analysis
  • Simulating noise, stochastic adjoints, and how to interpret Monte Carlo results
• Proportional Navigation and Miss Distance
  • Useful design relationships for rapid guidance system sizing
• Digital Noise Filters in the Homing Loop
  • Digital noise filter properties and how they influence system performance
• Advanced Guidance Laws
  • Deriving optimal guidance laws without optimal control theory
• Kalman Filters and the Homing Loop
  • Combining Kalman filtering and optimal guidance and optimal guidance techniques
• Endoatmospheric Ballistic Targets
  • The importance of speed, re-entry angle, and ballistic coefficient
• Extended Kalman Filtering
  • Performance comparison of linear, linearized, and extended Kalman filters
• Other Forms of Tactical Guidance and Tactical Zones
  • Beam rider, command to line-of-sight guidance plus drag and acceleration factors
• Strategic Considerations
  • Newton’s law of universal gravitation and it’s impact on performance
• Boosters
  • Using the rocket equation and an introduction to gravity turn steering
  • Lambert Guidance
    • Solving Lambert’s problems and Lambert and GEM steering for boosters
• Miscellaneous Topics and T4 Guidance (Try This, Try That)
  • Gravity compensation, pulsed and burnout guidance plus a predictor-corrector method
• Radome Slope Estimation
  • Using dither signals and bandpass filtering to extract radome slope
• Multiple Target Problem
  • How performance is influenced by late target resolution
• Intercept Point Prediction Error
  • How tracking sensor properties influence prediction error and divert requirements
• Boost Phase Estimation
  • How both linear and extended Kalman filters can be used
• Theater Missile Defense
  • How to use guidance methods for influencing engagement geometry
• Tracking an Exoatmospheric Target
  • Comparing fading memory and Kalman filters
• Weaving Targets, Weave Guidance and Weave Filtering
  • Why weaving targets present a guidance challenge
  • Useful performance curves for proportional navigation guidance systems
  • Optimal guidance laws and advanced Kalman filtering for improving performance
• Fixed MMAE Technique and the Weaving Target Problem
  • How a linear Kalman filter bank approach can be used to estimate target weave frequency
• Other Methods For Guidance Law Development
  • How optimal control techniques and other methods can be use to derive more advanced guidance laws
• Flight Control Systems
  • How the flight control system interacts with the guidance system
• The Three-Loop Autopilot
  • Satisfying time and frequency domain constraints simultaneously
• Nonlinear Computerized Analysis Methods That Work
  • How CADET, SLAM and other methods can be used to analyze performance
• Feedback Linearization
  • A simple technique for dramatically improving flight control system performance
• Kalman Filters For Small Miss Distance
  • Making use of a priori information for improved performance
• Flight Control Compensation
  • A simple yet controversial method for canceling out flight control dynamics
• The Most Unusual Guidance Method
  • The method of Gracey and missile control without moving parts

Instructor
Paul Zarchan has more than 35 years of experience designing, analyzing, and evaluating missile guidance systems. He has worked as Principal Engineer for Raytheon Missile Systems Division, has served as Senior Research Engineer with the Israel Ministry of Defense and was a Principal Member of the Technical Staff for C.S. Draper Laboratory. Mr. Zarchan is currently a Member of the Technical Staff at MIT Lincoln Laboratory and is working on problems related to missile defense.

Course Materials
Tactical and Strategic Missile Guidance, Fourth Edition, Paul Zarchan
CD containing all the FORTRAN, MATLAB, TrueBASIC and C codes used in the text (formatted for both IBM and Macintosh).
Complete set of course notes

Who Should Attend
This course will benefit managers, engineers, and programmers at all levels who work with or need to learn about interceptor guidance system technology. The heuristic arguments and numerous examples will give managers an appreciation for guidance so that they can interact effectively with specialists. Engineers and programmers will find the detailed course material and many FORTRAN source code listings invaluable for both learning and reference.