AbstractIn recent years, machine learning theory has set off a wave of research in the field of radar signal processing. In this study, a novel algorithm for sea‐surface target detection based on a stacked autoencoder (SAE) is proposed, which has already been applied in the authors’ coastal defense radar system. In the proposed algorithm, the sea surface echo data are cut into a large number of two‐dimensional (2‐D) images through a sliding window, mapping the cell under test (CUT) and the 2‐D images one by one and performing classification or detection from the perspective of 2‐D signal processing. Experimental results of simulated data and real radar data show that the proposed algorithm based on the SAE has better target detection performance compared with the traditional cell averaging constant false alarm rate (CA‐CFAR) algorithm. Besides, the proposed algorithm shows certain interference suppression ability in real data processing. As far as it is known, there is no public report on the detection of 2‐D sea surface targets based on the SAE algorithm in coastal defense radar.