Abstract: In this paper, a method based on Nonlinear Least Squares (NLS) is presented for detecting the maneuvering aerial targets with the strong clutter background. Firstly, the signal model of the target is constructed. Secondly, the data after clutter suppression is obtained. Then, the parameters of the targets can be estimated while using NLS through minimizing the sum of the squares of the distances between the former two. The method can provide an accurate estimate of the parameters even when the data sample is limited. The effectiveness of the method is verified via simulated data.