A Novel Three-Dimensional Sliding Pursuit Guidance and Control of Surface-to-Air Missiles

In recent decades, missile guidance and control have advanced significantly, with methods like pure pursuit (PP), command to line-of-sight (CLOS), and proportional navigation (PN) enabling accurate target interception in uncertain environments through line-of-sight (LOS) tracking. In this work, we propose a novel 3D sliding pure pursuit guidance (3DSPP) law for controlling a surface-to-air missile against a maneuvering target. The algorithm is compared with established guidance laws such as zero-effort miss distance “ZEM-PN” and “3D-PP”, with performance metrics including the miss distance Md and time of closest approach tcap. The results demonstrate that the 3DSPP outperforms the conventional methods by achieving the lowest Md= 0.1497 m and the fastest tcap= 7.3853 s, ensuring more precise and rapid interception. The algorithm also exhibits superior robustness to noise and efficient energy management, making it a promising solution for real-world missile guidance systems.