Reduction of Rocket Dispersion Using Model Predictive Lateral Pulse Jet Control

Uncontrolled fire ground to ground rockets produce high impact point dispersion due to various sources of error and environmental uncertainties. To increase a high single-shot hit probability, the rocket systems must equip with an on-board control mechanism. This paper investigates the use of lateral pulse jet control to reduce the dispersion of fire rockets. The numerical simulation of rocket trajectory is used to predict the impact point from an arbitrary state. The magnitude and direction of pulse jet thrust are based on the difference between the predicted impact point and target location. A comparison of dispersion for the uncontrolled and controlled impact points is proceeded through a Monte-Carlo simulation. It is shown that the dispersion radius, which is defined as the radius of circle centered at the mean impact point and containing 50% of the impact points, for the controlled case is noticeably smaller than the uncontrolled case.