Exo-atmospheric missile intercept system employing tandem interceptors to overcome unfavorable sun positions

摘要

A missile intercept system using radiation sensors for guidance that can avoid intercept uncertainty due to unfavorable positions of intense radiation sources, like the sun, moon, or countermeasures flares. When the sensor viewing angle is close to such intense radiation sources, the optics on the kill vehicle may be substantially degraded or even destroyed. The potential for an "out of the sun" attack cannot be avoided when international treaties restrict each country to a single defense site while potential launch sites are proliferating about the globe. Therefore, two kill vehicles are launched when an intercept planner determines that the viewing angle from the kill vehicle to the target vehicle will be looking at or near the sun during the engagement. A surrogate kill vehicle is launched on a trajectory that will "fly-by" the target vehicle with viewing angles that will not "see" the sun. The surrogate kill vehicle then sends tracking data to the other kill vehicle for use by the second kill vehicle to guide itself to the intercept. This system allows the use of missiles in development on existing Exo-atmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV) programs with minimal cost impact to those programs.