Abstract Switching based detectors provide a robust solution to the problem of managing interference in sliding window detection processes. Recent developments have shown how such a detector can be formulated for the case of target detection in Pareto distributed clutter, which is a new model for X-band maritime surveillance radar clutter returns. However, an issue with this development is that the full constant false alarm rate property is not achieved. It is shown how this can be rectified, and a new switched geometric mean detector is produced, which is shown to provide a robust solution to the management of interference while achieving the full constant false alarm rate property.