Examines the control engineering aspects of guided weapon systems with a treatment of the use of multi-loop closed loop control theory. Includes an account of the design of optimal servos, autopilots, target trackers, & control instrumentation.

Airborne Vehicle Guidance and Control Systems is a broad and wide- angled engineering and technological area for research, and continues to be important not only in military defense systems but also in industrial process control and in commercial transportation networks such as various Global Positioning Systems (GPS). The book fills a long-standing gap in the literature. The author is retired from the Air Force Institute and received the Air Force's Outstanding Civilian Career Service Award.

Indhold: The Performance of Target Trackers; Missile Servos; Missile Control Methods; Aerodynamic Derivatives and Aerodynamic Transfer Functions; Missile Instruments; Autopilot Design; Line of Sight Guidance Loops; Homing Heads and some Associated Stability Problems; Proportional Navigation and Homing Guidance Loops; Wiener Filter Theory Applied to Guidance Loops Design; Modern Control Theory Applied to Guidance Loop Design; Kalman Filters.

Stringent demands on modern guided weapon systems require new approaches to guidance, control, and estimation. There are requirements for pinpoint accuracy, low cost per round, easy upgrade paths, enhanced performance in counter-measure environments, and the ability to track low-observable targets. Advances in Missile Guidance, Control, and Estimat

Over the past half century, guided weapons have developed faster than any other form of weapon system, and they now exert a major influence on international politics, strategy, and tactics. Guided Weapons explains the technology and development of such systems and their use on the battlefield against armored vehicles, ground targets, and aircraft. This new edition has been fully revised and updated to include all recent advances in the field, with particular emphasis on fiber-optic guidance.