NUMERICA CORPORATION — Department of Defense SBIR Phase II: MDA18-002

Description

Hypervelocity projectiles (HVPs) offer the potential for highly effective and low-cost point defense against missile threats. Classical guidance schemes are ill-suited to the unpowered dynamics of the HVP, as they fail to account for its changing capabilities and limited energy budget over the course of the fly-out. Numerica’s solution consists of an automated real-time fly-out trajectory optimization that not only accounts for the changing dynamics of the HVP, but also ensures robustness and reactiveness against evasive adversaries. The solution produces live estimates of the intercept likelihood, enabling fire-control specialists to make informed decisions as the engagement progresses. Additionally, the framework natively supports the capability to coordinate multiple interceptors to cooperatively engage incoming threats. Phase I work has demonstrated the capability of the solution in all of these capacities. Phase II development will enable the further maturation of this solution, the integration of accurate dynamical models based on classified data, and a deployment-ready implementation that can interact with actual hardware. Approved for Public Release 19-MDA-10203 (4 Sep 19)