Abstract: To solve the dilemma that the poor Doppler resolution and coherent processing gain reduces the performance of ship detection in skywave over-the-horizon radar (OTHR) systems with short coherent integration time (CIT), a detection scheme called PHM that synthesize adaptive sea clutter suppression and ship target signal reconstruction and detection is proposed. The PHM scheme suppresses sea clutter by using the algorithm of peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR)-high-order singular value decomposition (HOSVD) firstly. Thus, the signal becomes sparse, and the false alarms in the following detection step are to be greatly reduced. Than the PHM reconstructs and detects the signal component of ship targets simultaneously. Thus, both the detection performance of low detectable large and medium ship targets and the accuracy of target Doppler frequency in the results of detection are improved. The simulation analysis and processing results of measurement data verified the validity of the PHM scheme.