Determining the best type of defending missile for cooperative missile defence

Abstract

: Can a team of low-cost defending missiles provide a more cost-effective approach to intercepting a high-performance attacking missile than a single high-cost defending missile? The trajectory of the high-performance attacking missile is unknown and predicting the possible paths brings uncertainties to intercept calculations. Although low-cost defending missiles may have limited abilities to detect and pursue the attack-ing missile, they will have the ability to cooperate with each other to see and intercept the attacking missile. The objective is to find a cost-effective solution that will maximise the probability of hitting (and stopping) the attacking missile. Two key questions need to be addressed: what is the best strategy for a team of cooperating defending missiles, and what are the cost-effective missile characteristics for a team of cooperating defending missiles? This paper develops a method for determining which characteristics of defending missiles give the best per-formance. A set of 1728 different defending missile teams were generated by varying the number of missiles, missile speed, seeker performance and missile manoeuvrability. The results show that seeker range has the greatest influence on performance. Whether a team of low-cost defending missiles is more cost-effective than a single high-performance defending missile depends on the relative costs of the two missile types. Although increasing the number of defending missiles can ensure good performance of a missile defence system, in cases where the unit cost of a low-cost missile remains high, teams of low-cost cooperating defending missiles might not be a cost-effective solution.