Stochastic Analysis of the Interception of Maneuvering Antisurface Missiles

The interception of a maneuvering antisurface missile, as in ballistic missile defense and ship defense scenarios, is formulated as an imperfect information, zero-sum, pursuit-evasion game with a state constraint imposed on the evader. Assuming that the perfect informationversion of the gamedoes not yield a successful result for the defense, the solution of this game is in mixed strategies. The blind antisurface missile is programmed to perform a random maneuver sequence. The guidance law of the interceptor missile includes a bias, which partially compensates for the inability to achieve a satisfactory deterministic outcome and yields a nonzero probability of success. Moreover, the defense system must launch the interceptor missile at a randomly selected initial range from the incoming antisurface missile based on the solution of a game of timing. A new methodology is presented to assess the probability of successful interception as a function of the parameters of the scenario.