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Propulsion, Guidance, Control, Seekers and Technology

ATI's Modern Missile Analysis course

Summary:

    This course provides a comprehensive introduction to homing missiles operating in the atmosphere and in space. The practical aspects of modern tactical missiles are stressed. Missile propulsion, warheads, autopilots, guidance, control, seekers, and simulation are covered. Emphasis is on autopilots, homing guidance and seekers and their interaction. Tradeoffs and issues for different types of missile seekers and guidance policies are discussed. Phenomena such as noise and jamming and their effects are reviewed. Miss distance and factors affecting it are analyzed. Comparisons of different missile design and guidance approaches are presented. This is an introductory course for managers, engineers, physicists and technicians interested in missile technology. A complete set of lecture notes and illustrative performance examples will be provided.

Instructor:

    Dr. Walter R. Dyer is a graduate of UCLA in Control Systems Engineering and Applied Mathematics. He has thirty years of industry, government and academic experience in the analysis and design of tactical and strategic missiles. His experience includes Standard Missile, Stinger, AMRAAM, HARM, MX, Small ICBM, and ballistic missile defense. He is currently Technical Advisor to the Deputy for Technology at the Missile Defense Agency in Washington, DC. He has authored numerous industry and government reports and published prominent papers in missile technology. He has taught university courses in Kalman Filtering and Random Processes, Control Systems, Electromagnetics, Computer Simulation, and Circuit Theory.

What you will learn:

    You will gain an understanding of the design and analysis of homing missiles and the integrated performance of their subsystems.

    • Missile propulsion and control in the atmosphere and in space.
    • Clear explanation of homing guidance.
    • Types of missile seekers and how they work.
    • Missile testing and simulation.
    • Latest developments and future trends.

Course Outline:

  1. Introduction. Brief history of missiles. Types of guided missiles. Introduction to ballistic missile defense. Endoatmospheric and exoatmospheric missile operation. Missile basing. Missile subsystems overview. Warheads, lethality and hit-to-kill. Power and power conditioning.

  2. Missile Propulsion. The rocket equation. Solid and liquid propulsion. Single stage and multistage boosters. Ramjets and scramjets. Axial propulsion. Divert and attitude control systems. Effects of gravity and atmospheric drag.

  3. Missile Airframes, Autopilots and Control. Phases of missile flight. Purpose and functions of autopilots. Missile control configurations. Autopilot design. Open-loop autopilots. Inertial instruments and feedback. Autopilot response, stability, and agility. Body modes and rate saturation. Roll control and induced roll in high performance missiles. Radomes and their effects on missile control. Adaptive autopilots. Rolling airframe missiles.

  4. Exoatmospheric Missiles for Ballistic Missile Defense. Exoatmospheric missile autopilots, propulsion and attitude control. Pulse width modulation. Exo-atmospheric missile autopilots. Limit cycles.

  5. Missile Guidance. Boost and midcourse guidance. Zero effort miss. Proportional navigation and augmented proportional navigation. Biased proportional navigation. Predictive guidance. Optimum homing guidance. Guidance filters. Homing guidance examples and simulation results. Miss distance comparisons with different homing guidance laws. Sources of miss and miss reduction. Beam rider, pure pursuit, and deviated pursuit guidance.

  6. Missile Seekers. Seeker types and operation for endo- and exo-atmospheric missiles. Passive, active and semi active missile guidance. Radar basics and radar seekers. Passive sensing basics and passive seekers. Scanning seekers and focal plane arrays. Seeker comparisons and tradeoffs for different missions. Signal processing and noise reduction.

  7. Simulation and its applications. Current simulation capabilities and future trends. Hardware in the loop. Types of missile testing and their uses, advantages and disadvantages of testing alternatives.

Tuition:

    Tuition for this four-day course is $1595 per person at one of our scheduled public courses. Onsite pricing is available. Please call us at 410-956-8805 or send an email to ati@ATIcourses.com.