Realization of proportional navigation and lateral acceleration autopilot for endoatmospheric kinetic interceptor with pulse thrusters

The guidance and control strategy for endoatmospheric kinetic interceptor controlled by lateral pulse thrusters was detailed. The pulse thruster control system was firstly proposed. The sample-and-hold approach was introduced to design a novel lateral acceleration autopilot on the basis of traditional two-loop topology. Combined with proportional navigation guidance law and the novel autopilot, the overall ballistic trajectory was presented and examined. Simulation results show that the pulse thruster control strategy can greatly improve the control system response speed and the maximal acceleration capability for realizing kinetic kill interception.