Abstract
A traditional approach to singularly perturbed optimal control problems is based on an approximation of these problems by reduced problems which are obtained via the formal replacement of the fast variables by the states of equilibrium of the fast subsystems considered with frozen slow variables and controls. It is shown that such an approximation is valid if and only if certain families of periodic optimization problems admit steady state solutions. It is also shown how the solutions of these problems can be used to construct suboptimal controls for singularly perturbed problems when approximation by reduced problems is not possible.