As the core of maritime transportation and an important military target in maritime warfare, the detection and recognition of ships have extremely profound practical significance in both civilian and military fields. However, the complex marine environment makes ship target detection difficult. Infrared imaging and target detection have excellent applicability in complex sea conditions. In response to the current demand for ship target detection, this paper summarizes the current development status of ship target infrared detection technology, analyzes infrared image preprocessing methods and ship target detection algorithms based on deep learning, compares the advantages and disadvantages of mainstream methods, and finally systematically summarizes and sorts out the research status and technological improvements, And prospects for its future development trends were presented.