6.8 Missile Flight Model

In this section we will develop the ballistic missile flight model, summarizing the discussion of the previous sections. The development of this flight model will be treated as an example. It should be emphasized that this missile model is by no means complete, and is offered here as a guide for further study. The actual model will depend on the user requirements and missile designer/analyst. In essence, the ballistic missile model provides the capability to model multistage missiles with detailed pitch program guidance. Flight section options include the ability to set up multiple powered flight segments representing engine thrusting, unpowered segments representing ballistic flight, and missile staging events representing missile mass changes. Guidance options such as minimum energy, depressed and lofted flyouts, gravity turns, or multiple guidance phases can be used to achieve the desired flyout. Moreover, the ballistic missile model will be based on the powered flight program; the analyst can choose the FORTRAN (or another method such as Ada, C, or C ⁺⁺) methodology and structure it to update multiple missiles, that is, provide the missile states to other models. The equations of the missile model have been written in a format to make it easy with regard to programming and/or coding in FORTRAN or on other language. The ballistic missile model is further supported by the launch iteration schemes. Specifically, the launch iteration schemes determine the correct setting of specific parameters to allow the missile to fly the desired...