Effects of datalink target data on air-to-air missile performance

Modern air-to-air missiles rely on data updated via a datalink about the position and velocity of a target until their own seeker can lock on to the target. The quality of the datalink target data depends on the errors of position and velocity updates, delay of these updates and lost updates. This paper introduces a simulation framework for analyzing the utilization of this data. The framework consists of models describing the target, the missile, and the generation of the datalink target updates. The versatile simulation experiments presented in the paper analyze the effects of the quality of the datalink data on the performance of different air-to-air missiles. The measure of performance is the probability of kill. The results of the simulations imply that the quality of the final updates before attempting the transition to using the missile’s seeker have the largest effect on the performance. Unless a large percentage of the target updates are lost or the seeker’s lock on to the target is delayed, the missile can typically get within a lethal miss distance of the target. The framework presented in this paper is suitable for evaluating the performance of all types of guided weapons.