For the terminal guidance problem of a missile intercepting a maneuvering target, a profile-tracking-based adaptive guidance law is proposed with inherent continuity in this paper. To flexibly and quantitatively control the convergence rate of the line-of-sight rate, a standard tracking profile is designed where the convergence rate is analytically given. Then, a nonsingular fast terminal sliding-mode control approach is used to track the profile. By estimating the square of the upper bound of

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... arget maneuver, an adaptive term is constructed to compensate the maneuver. Therefore, no information of target acceleration is required in the derived law. Stability analysis shows that the tracking error can converge to a small neighborhood of zero in finite time. Furthermore, a guidance-command-conversion scheme is presented to convert the law into the one appropriate for endoatmospheric interceptions. Simulation results indicate that the proposed law is effective and outperforms existing guidance laws.