A new sonar system design is proposed to detect, localize, and classify seafloor bottom laying targets, discriminating man-made items from natural ones in the presence of seafloor reverberation. Target-physics-based characteristics of multilook, multi-aperture return signals from seafloor and minelike objects (MLO) targets are exploited to improve system performance. The proposed approach is a synthesis and extension of techniques found in areas including standard and interferometric synthetic aperture radar (SAR/IFSAR), swath bathymetry (SB), monopulse radar tracking applications, and 3-D radar target identification and imaging. Additionally, the proposed approach generates on output a reusable oceanographic data format that increases the utility of acoustic databases derived from the format and provides a convenient paradigm for visualization of the data.