Traditionally, missile autopilots have been designed using linear control approaches with gain scheduling. Autopilot design is typically carried out in the frequency domain and the plant is linearized around various operating points on the trajectory. Moreover, three single axis autopilots are usually designed without considering the interaction among the motion axes, i.e., the autopilots in ea...

Ballistic missiles and Anti-Satellite (ASAT) weapons operate using similar technological means but not with the same level of technology or engineering maturity. ASATs require a more sophisticated systems engineering and integration requirements to be able to adapt to the challenges posed by an ASAT intercept. The main difficulty arises from the requirements for detection in space and the high ...

In 1957, the Navy’s Special Projects Office approached APL for assistance in developing the Polaris Fleet Ballistic Missile (FBM) Strategic Weapon System. The primary task was to define and execute a comprehensive FBM test and evaluation program to validate the integrated weapon system design. The launch of Sputnik created a widespread view that a “missile gap” existed with the Soviet Union. In...

Despite the large number of gunshot wounds treated in civilian and military practice, embolization of missiles to the pulmonary artery is relatively uncommon. In a review of 7,500 medical reports from casualties from the Vietnam Vascular Registry, only 22 patients with known vascular trauma had missile emboli (0.3%), and of those, only 4 (.0005%) were to the pulmonary artery. Causative agents o...

The use of visual sensing to acquire and track targets has the potential to significantly reduce cost in comparison to active sensors. We present preliminary results for a system that combines a webcam with a toy foam missile launcher on an altitude-azimuth mount. The controller uses foreground segmentation to identity new elements in a scene. It then applies SURF feature detection and a pinhol...

The flight environment of the Standard Missile, Block IV A interceptor involves high speeds that place severe aerodynamic and aero-thermalloads on the missile optical window and sensor. The supersonic flow over the missile produces aero-optical effects that can degrade IR seeker performance. This report summarizes an analysis of aero-optical aberrations due to shock front and shear layer densit...

The application of a new nonlinear robust control strategy to the design of missile autopilots is presented. The control approach described and demonstrated here is based upon the numerical solution of the Hamilton-Jacobi-Isaacs equation by Successive Galerkin Approximation. Using this approach, feedback controllers are computed by an iterative application of a numerical Galerkin-type PDE solve...

The use of a three dimensional Discrete Element Method (DEM) is proposed to study concrete submitted to flat rigid nose shaped missile impacts. Spalling, scabbing, penetration and perforation events are characterized by the model. The reduction in missile velocity is compared with real test cases made by the French Atomic Agency. The first results show a good agreement between the numerical and...