Cooperative interception via staggering and information sharing

A novel cooperative tracking and interception strategy, which exploits information sharing and missile staggering, is presented. The key idea underlying the approach is to exploit the superior information collected by the leading missile to improve the interception performance of the trailing missiles. For tracking a maneuvering target, the paper derives a nonlinear adaptation of an interacting multiple model filter in cooperative and non-cooperative estimation modes. The optimal staggering between the missiles is derived based on a linear model and a deterministic approximation of the stochastic estimation process. An extensive Monte Carlo study, in a nonlinear two-dimensional simulation of a ballistic missile defense scenario, is used to demonstrate the viability of the proposed strategy. It is shown that, for a two-on-one interception engagement, the trailing missile's estimation performance, in the information-sharing mode, substantially improves, when compared to that of non-cooperating missiles. Combining this estimation improvement with guidance laws that utilize target acceleration yields a dramatic improvement in the team's closed loop interception performance.