The invention relates to a 
flight formation cooperative 
adaptive tracking control method based on a 
virtual leader, and belongs to the field of formation flight control. According to the method, a virtual 
pilot unmanned aerial vehicle coordination strategy is introduced, the relative position of each unmanned aerial vehicle and a 
pilot is set as feedback information, control input is designed by adopting a 
backstepping method, and coordinated trajectory tracking is realized according to a 
flight formation. A neural network is adopted to estimate dynamics uncertainty, online data is collected to construct prediction error evaluation 
estimation capability, and a neural network weight adaptive updating law is designed in combination with a 
tracking error. According to the method, the influence of the problem of dynamic uncertainty of the model in the formation 
flight process of the multi-unmanned aerial vehicle 
system on the tracking performance is considered, a composite 
estimation algorithm based on 
data analysis is designed, the precision of 
uncertainty estimation is enhanced, and a new technical approach is provided for improving the formation flight performance.