Abstract: Sea dominance is still strong nations' military competition focus. The paper introduces DARPA's marine operation mode research programs, such as CDMaST, TERN, Hydra, UFP, DASH, etc., and depicts equipment and technology research projects supporting marine battlefield, such as ACTUV, TRACE, quantum sensor, cognitive radar, etc. Finally, the paper presents development direction of future marine early warning and detection system in three aspects as system function composition, cooperative operation dimension and intelligent system.