Cooperative guidance for active defence based on line-of-sight constraint under a low-speed ratio

In this study, an active defence cooperative guidance (ADCG) law that enables cheap and low-speed airborne defence missiles with low manoeuverability to accurately intercept fast and expensive attack missiles with high manoeuverability was designed to enhance the capability of aircraft for active defence. This guidance law relies on the line-of-sight (LOS) guidance method, and it realises active defence by adjusting the geometric LOS relationship involving an attack missile, a defence missile and an aircraft. We use a nonlinear integral sliding surface and an improved second-order sliding mode reaching law to design the guidance law. This can not only reduce the chattering phenomenon in the guidance command, but it can also ensure that the system can reach the sliding surface from any initial position in a finite time. Simulations were carried out to verify the proposed law using four cases: different manoeuvering modes of the aircraft, different speed ratios of the attack and defence missiles, different reaching laws applied to the ADCG law and a robustness analysis. The results show that the proposed guidance law can enable a defence missile to intercept an attack missile by simultaneously using information about the relative motions of the attack missile and the aircraft. It is also highly robust in the presence of errors and noise.