Toward the Definition of Escape and Capture Regions for a Two Aircraft Pursuit-Evasion Game

The motivation for the thesis originates in research currently being conducted at the USAF Armament Laboratory, Eglin AFB, Florida. These studies concern the performance of an F4-E aircraft in air-to-air combat the weapon system considered is an infra-red, heat-seeking missile. The studies fall into two categories a Definition of those regions in the vicinity of a target aircraft which the attacker must penetrate in order to attain a probability of killing his opponent greater than zero definition of optimal strategies for the attacker to intercept and penetrate the high probability of kill P sub K regions. In all cases, the target aircraft is considered as passive and unaware of attack. This paper makes the logical extension to the above research, and attempts to develop a method by which the capability of the attacker may be defined against an intelligent and evasive target. Modified author abstract