This article investigates a nonlinear adaptive sliding mode formation control method for intercepting missiles subject to uncontrollable speed. Firstly, the dynamics system of intercepting missiles is obtained by using system affine transformation via virtual control augmented strategy. Besides, an adaptive law is developed to evaluate unknown disturbances in an input channel in real-time. To increase the convergence rate of formation control, a nonlinear sliding mode formation control method based on virtual leader structure, is proposed. The Lyapunov method is employed to analyze the closed-loop stability. The simulation results illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.