Traditional machine learning methods are easily influenced by subjective experience during feature extraction,Causing low recognition accuracy of underwater acoustic signal targets.Generally,deep learning algorithm models are complex,Training is time-consuming and computationally complex.Extreme Learning Autoencoder has strong non-linear processing ability,it is suitable for underwater acoustic signal target recognition with nonlinear characteristics.Moreover,the model has significant advantages such as fast learning speed and strong generalization ability.This paper applies the extreme learning autoencoder algorithm to underwater acoustic signal target recognition,and compare with convolutional neural networks,autoencoders,and extreme learning machine recognition methods.The result shows that the proposed method has the best accuracy in target recognition of underwater acoustic signals hand has a shorter training time.