A hostile missile engager senses the missile and supplies kinematic data to an interceptor missile fire control processor, which predicts the target's future location with the aid of a powered/unpowered identifier. The identifier passes the kinematic data through filters having lags for powered and unpowered operation, to produce residuals and residual covariances. The probabilities of powered and unpowered motion are determined, and thresholded. If the probability of powered motion or unpowered motion exceeds its threshold, the motion is deemed known. If the target is deemed to be powered, a set of the three-dimensional kinematic features is applied to a nine-state Kalman filter to produce an optimal state. If the target missile is unpowered, a set of the three-dimensional kinematic features corresponding to the second lag is applied to a six-state Kalman filter to produce an optimal state for the unpowered motion. The optimal states control the interceptor toward the target.