Formation control of UAV is the key technology of UAV cluster cooperative operation. The advantages and disadvantages of various formation control methods from the point of engineering practice and then adopts pilot-follow method to carry out formation control of UAV is compared. Proportional-integral-derivative control is selected as the basis of the pilot-follow method and the algorithm is implemented in the form of software simulation, and the pilot-follow method is verified by different formation, the experimental result show that the algorithm is available and stable information keeping control.