Abstract The inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) system exploits the movement of the target to form its high‐resolution image. Further, the multi‐polarisation acquisition in ISAR collects additional information on the target's scattering properties and surface characteristics that help to enhance the imaging capabilities of ISAR. In this study, we suggest a novel multi‐polarisation ISAR configuration based on the circular transmit and linear receive (CTLR) combination, namely CTLR hybrid‐pol ISAR, for the application of non‐cooperative target detection and imaging. The CTLR hybrid‐pol ISAR captures sufficient information about the targets to accurately characterise them, and simultaneously overcomes the drawbacks of full‐polarimetry (full‐pol) ISAR associated with the transmission of two pulses to obtain a single unit of polarimetric back‐scattered information. Validation is performed using real ISAR data of a T‐72 tank target, collected under the moving and stationary target acquisition and recognition (MSTAR) programme conducted by the Georgia Tech Research Institute. A comparative analysis based on SPAN, entropy, and polarimetric decomposition is carried out between the full‐pol ISAR and CTLR hybrid‐pol ISAR information. The results conclude that CTLR hybrid‐pol ISAR maintains a similar level of information content compared to full‐pol ISAR while overcoming its drawbacks.