TITLE:
Trajectory Optimisation and Manoeuvrability Trade-Offs for Hypersonic Glide Vehicles in Contested Atmospheric Re-Entry
AUTHORS:
Ruggero Doronzo
KEYWORDS:
Hypersonic Glide Vehicle, Atmospheric Re-Entry, Trajectory Optimisation, Manoeuvrability, Missile Defence, Bank-Angle Modulation, Sutton-Graves Heating, Cross-Range Capability, Skip-Glide
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Aerospace Science and Technology,
Vol.11 No.3,
July
30,
2026
ABSTRACT: Hypersonic Glide Vehicles (HGVs) have become the focal point of a renewed great-power competition in long-range strike capability. Unlike traditional ballistic re-entry vehicles, HGVs spend the majority of their flight in the upper atmosphere at Mach numbers between 5 and 25, executing manoeuvres that render conventional missile defence architectures largely ineffective. This paper develops an analytical and simulation-based framework for HGV trajectory optimisation under realistic atmospheric and structural constraints, with explicit attention to the manoeuvrability-range-survivability trade space. Three reference trajectories are presented and compared: ballistic, equilibrium glide, and skip-glide. Bank-angle modulation produces lateral displacements of +/−800 km without violating thermal protection or load-factor constraints, and the resulting tracking degradation against legacy SAM systems exceeds 60% under conservative assumptions. The framework is grounded in Sutton-Graves stagnation heating correlations, a standard exponential atmosphere, and Newtonian aerodynamic theory, making it fully reproducible from open-source tools.