Abstract: Ship target recognition in SAR images is a key technology in SAR ocean surveillance domain. Based on researching literatures widely, firstly, the main flow of ship recognition in SAR images is built in this paper; secondly, a lot of features, with theirphysical meanings, advantages and disadvantages for ship recognition in SAR images, are discussed; thirdly, many existing classification algorithms applied to ship recognition in SAR images are summarized roundly; finally, the problems which are faced with inour research are analyzed, and the further research directions of ship farget recognition in SAR image are concluded.