Optimal planar evasive aircraft maneuvers against proportional navigation missiles

A comparative study of evasive strategies of an aircraft against a missile with fixed, gravity-limited, proportional navigation is conducted for both subsonic and supersonic confrontations. A complete point-mass aircraft model and a variable-mass missile model that includes missile dynamics are used. No linearization is required in the analysis, and all motion is constrained to a horizontal plane. Sequential quadratic programming is used to solve the optimal control problem. Numerical results are presented for an early model of the F-4 fighter aircraft. In particular, the effects of varying the aircraft/missile initial velocity ratio, the missile initial heading angle, and the missile guidance time constant are determined.