Abstract: Aiming at reentry decoys in thin atmosphere, a discrimination method based on conservation of energy is presented for light decoys. To avoid the convergence process of estimation of mass\|to\|drag ratio, in the new method, the loss in mechanical energy of the unit mass is used of target to represent the
mass\|to\|drag ratio to achieve the discrimination of light decoys from other targets. First, the analytic expression of discrimination statistics is derived according to energy equations of different targets. Second, the variance estimation of the discrimination statistics is derived and the discrimination threshold is designed. Finally, feasibility and validity of the proposed method is verified by experimental results.

Key words: Decoy discrimination, Mass-to-draG ratio, Conservation of energy, Thin atmosphere, Light decoy