Due to various dynamics, an angle of attack control law for hypersonic cruise vehicle in near space was designed based on adaptive sliding mode control. The control law adopted an inner-outer loop control configuration, inner loop through introducing pitch rate feedback to improve the system damp and the dynamic performance, outer loop control angle of attack based on adaptive sliding mode control, the parameters of the sliding mode controller were adjusted by the adaptive law to approximate the upper bound of model perturbation and external disturbances. The simulation results show that the control method has properties of quick response and nice steady accuracy; it also has high tracking performance and robustness.