A Modeling and Simulation Framework for Evaluating Aircraft Survivability
Author(s)
Advisor(s)
Editor(s)
Collections
Supplementary to:
Permanent Link
Abstract
The scope of this work is to establish a framework for evaluating either the survivability of an attritable aircraft or the performance of a kinetic effector based on the principal sensor system. The assumption for the kinetic effector is that the principal sensor system, whether an infrared seeker or active radar, is the most expensive subcomponent with the highest impact on system performance and requirements. High-tech systems, such as active radar seekers, generally have long development lead times and complex production requirements. Due to these considerations, the bulk of this work focuses on integrating a higher fidelity model of the radar seeker into an open-source flight simulation. The radar model includes component-level design parameters that affect precision and accuracy, directly impacting the performance of the kinetic interceptor. These performance parameters are directly coupled to the threat model. The flight simulation architecture used to produce this work is based on the open-source CADAC++ simulation developed by Dr. Peter H. Zipfel. To enable this mission, we will model the threat and the missile. The missile body will be modeled off of a scaled AIM-9 Sidewinder. The threat will be modeled off of the HESA Shahed 136, a proliferated loitering munition widely used in the Russo-Ukrainian war. Both the missile and target will be passed through
OpenAero to generate aerodynamics tables for the simulation. The target will be further processed through the open-source POFacets Matlab Suite to calculate RCS as another input to the simulation. For the seeker subsystem, we will integrate a model of a Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave Radar Seeker. A coherent Mof N detection algorithm is used for the back-end processing, while monopulse processing is used to determine azimuth and elevation of the target with respect to the missile. The model is parametrically designed to allow for a trade space exploration on the effects of the selected hardware on the performance of the detection algorithms, and by extension the accuracy of the missile. The results are evaluated and presented to demonstrate that a modeling and simulation framework has been established for evaluating survivability of attritable aircraft.
Sponsor
Date
2026-01
Extent
Resource Type
Text
Resource Subtype
Rights Statement
Unless otherwise noted, all materials are protected under U.S. Copyright Law and all rights are reserved