Abstract: Shipborne high frequency sunface wave radar (HFSWR) can make use of the flexibility of shipborne platform to expand the detection range of HFSWR. However, the motion of the platform will also affect the target detection performance. In order to solve the problem that the bow change caused by the anchoring motion of the shipborne platform and the irregularity of the target echo widening range lead to the decline of target detection performance, a shipborne HFSWR target adaptive detection method suitable for the anchoring state of the platform is developed in this paper. Firstly, the difficulties in target detection are analyzed from two aspects: the target echo characteristics and the detection background statistical characteristics of shipborne HFSWR when the platform is anchored. Then, based on the analysis results of theoretical simulation and measured data, an adaptive target detection method is proposed. First, the influence caused by heading change is eliminated through the preprocessing of front-end data, and then the processing results are adaptively selected for the detection background and transformed into statistical characteristics. After CFAR detection, the detection results are obtained. Finally, the proposed method is verified by the measured data. The results show that the target adaptive detection method of shipborne HFSWR proposed in this paper can effectively solve the problem of target detection when the shipborne platform is anchored, which can significantly improve the target detection ability of shipborne HFSWR in the anchored state.