Definition
A guidance method, used primarily in guided missiles and certain remotely controlled vehicles, in which steering signals are generated by an external source — typically a ground station, ship, or launching aircraft — and transmitted to the vehicle in flight. The vehicle itself does not compute its own course; it simply executes the commands it receives.
Plain English
The missile or vehicle is steered from the outside. Someone on the ground or in another aircraft tracks it, decides where it should go, and radios the steering instructions to it.
Context Anchor
Seen in flight director, autopilot, and instrument approach discussions, especially when an aircraft is being guided along a chosen course or descent path.
Derivation
From 'command' (an order issued by an outside authority) and 'guidance' (the act of directing something along a path). The name reflects the key idea: the steering orders come from somewhere else, not from the vehicle itself.
Why Pilots Care
Most pilots will not operate command-guided weapons, but the term appears in military aviation, weapons familiarization, and some FAA reference material. Understanding it helps distinguish it from homing or self-contained guidance systems, which behave very differently in flight.
Analogy
Like a remote-controlled car. The car has no idea where it's going — the person with the controller decides, and the car just follows the signals.
Intuition Check
Command guidance is not a radio command from air traffic control. Here, “command” means a steering instruction generated by an aircraft system.
Example Sentence 1
Early surface-to-air missiles used command guidance, with operators on the ground tracking both the target and the missile and transmitting steering corrections.
Example Sentence 2
The autopilot was engaged in command guidance mode so it could follow the computed pitch commands for the missed approach climb.