A novel cooperative tracking and interception strategy, which ex-ploits information sharing and missile staggering, is presented. The keyidea underlying the approach is to exploit the superior information col-lected by the leading missile to improve the interception performanceof the trailing missiles. For tracking a maneuvering target, the paperderives a nonlinear adaptation of an interacting multiple model lter incooperative and non-cooperative estimation modes. The optimal stag-gering between the missiles is derived based on a linear model and adeterministic approximation of the stochastic estimation process. Anextensive Monte Carlo study, in a nonlinear two-dimensional simula-tion of a ballistic missile defense scenario, is used to demonstrate theviability of the proposed strategy. It is shown that, for a two-on-one in-terception engagement, the trailing missile's estimation performance, inthe information-sharing mode, substantially improves, when comparedto that of non-cooperating missiles. Combining this estimation improve-ment with guidance laws that utilize target acceleration yields a dramaticimprovement in the team's closed loop interception performance.
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