Aiming at the problem of keeping and changing the cooperative formation of manned/unmanned aerial vehicle (MAV/UAV) system in three-dimensional space, a method of MAV/UAV formation control with hierarchical structure is proposed.According to the MAV/UAV command and control mode and operation process, the control structure of MAV/UAV formation system is designed, in which the tracking controller of manned aircraft trajectory is designed by using dynamic surface control method, which solves the problem of repeated derivation of virtual control signal in backstepping control.Based on the limited centralized distributed formation control strategy, the UAV formation controller is designed, and the cooperative formation flight of multiple UAVs and a manned aircraft is realized.The stability of the controller is proved based on Lyapunov theory.Finally, the simulation of MAV/UAV formation in three-dimensional space is carried out, and the simulation results verify the effectiveness of the designed MAV/UAV formation control strategy.