A New Look at Classical vs Modern Homing Missile Guidance

Modern guidance systems are generally accepted to yield better performance than classical proportional navigation systems. However, it is not always recognized that this better performance carries with it certain costs in improved components or additional instruments. This paper compares a modern guidance system (MGS) to a classical proportional navigational (PN) homing missile guidance system in terms of performance, robustness, and ease of implementation. Quantitative first-order miss distances are compared to show that MGS has the smallest miss if component tolerances can be met, but as component tolerances or measurement errors degrade, MGS degrades faster than PN until, at relatively large component or measurement errors, PN has less miss distance than MGS.