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Since future air combat missions will involve both manned and unmanned aircraft, the primary motivation for this
research is to enable unmanned aircraft with intelligent maneuvering capabilities. During air combat maneuvering, pilots
use their knowledge and experience of maneuvering strategies and tactics to determine the best course of action. As a
result, we try to capture these aspects using an artificial immune system approach. The biological immune system
protects the body against intruders by recognizing and destroying harmful cells or molecules. It can be thought of as a
robust adaptive system that is capable of dealing with an enormous variety of disturbances and uncertainties. However,
another critical aspect of the immune system is that it can remember how previous encounters were successfully
defeated. As a result, it can respond faster to similar encounters in the future. This paper describes how an artificial
immune system is used to select and construct air combat maneuvers. These maneuvers are composed of autopilot mode
and target commands, which represent the low-level building blocks of the parameterized system. The resulting
command sequences are sent to a tactical autopilot system, which has been enhanced with additional modes and an
aggressiveness factor for enabling high performance maneuvers. Just as vaccinations train the biological immune system
how to combat intruders, training sets are used to teach the maneuvering system how to respond to different enemy
aircraft situations. Simulation results are presented, which demonstrate the potential of using immunized maneuver
selection for the purposes of air combat maneuvering.
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