Guidance law to improve the accuracy of tactical missiles

A missile guidance system for controlling a missile with canards to strike a target comprising:

• a missile longitudinal body axis;
• an inertial-space-fixed reference line;
• an angle, eta (.eta.) defined as an angle between the inertial-space-fixed reference line and the missile longitudinal body axis;
• means to measure the angle eta (.eta.)
• a missile velocity-vector representing the direction of the velocity of the missile;
• a missile angle of attack alpha (.alpha.) defined as an angle between the missile velocity vector and the missile longitudinal body axis;
• means for measuring the missile angle of attack (.alpha.);
• a missile flight path angle gamma (.gamma.);
• means to subtract angle eta (.eta.) and angle alpha (.alpha.) to form the missile flight path angle gamma (.gamma.);
• a missile to target line-of-sight;
• means to measure a pursuit angle epsilon (.xi.);
• defined as the angle between the missile to target line-of-sight and the missile velocity vector;
• means to form a weighted linear combination R of angle epsilon (.xi.) and angle gamma (.gamma.);
• a control means that functions to automatically move the canards to direct the missile to the target according to the weighted linear combination of epsilon (.xi.) and gamma (.gamma.);
• and
• means to feed the weighted linear combination of epsilon (.xi.) and gamma (.gamma.) to the control means.