Missile Flight Simulation

Surface-to-air missiles are designed to defend a land area against an aerial or theater ballistic missile threat. The size of the defended area and the capabilities of the threat have great influence on the speed, maneuverability, and lethality requirements of the missile system. Simulation of the missile flight path can provide valuable information about these requirements. A missile flight simulation is a computational tool that calculates the flight of a missile from launch until it engages the target. The simulation is based on mathematical models of the missile, target and environment. This book provides instruction for the preparation of these mathematical models to simulate the flight of a surface-to-air missile. This book may be used as a reference or as a textbook, although it is devoid of exercises. However, the reader is encourages to perform the simulation of Charter 12 using Matlab® and SimulinkTm, or a programming language such as Fortran (see Chapter 10).