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A computer simulation study has been made to examine the feasibility of improving the utility and capabilities of cable pickup systems. It was proposed that a vehicle with wings and control surfaces be attached to the hook at the end of the cable and the system towed by an aircraft. The towed vehicle was assumed to have a sensor package for precise tracking to the payload to be picked UP.A lumped mass, variable cable length, three-degree-of-freedom simulation program was used to explore the dynamics for the cable pickup maneuver. The measurements available to the guidance system were assumed to be angles plus range and a Kalman filter was used to estimate the state information. The information from the estimation algorithm is the input to the control system which is of the optimal linear digital regulator type. A nominal trajectory is established at target acquisition and the equations of motion are 1 inearized about the nominal trajectory. Perturbations from the nominal are driven to zero at intercept so that the hook-up is performed in a manner which requires the least control power.The simulation study showed that the guidance system was capable of very small miss distances(

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