A fast target recognition and tracking method based on characteristic corner is introduced, which is efficient in target tracking and holds corners very well during tracking. The contrast of the corner-pick-up methods based on gray histogram and based on edge indicates the necessity of a new characteristic model, and a simple tracking model based on characteristic corners is advanced, with improved processing efficiency and simplified tracking target. Throughout the simulation on 11 frames of the video sequence of a battleplane, whose speed is 300 m/s in the environment of computer with Pentium 4, 80 G random access memory, software Matlab2006a, the processing speed reaches 0.7 s, and the result indicates that this method is effective and simple compared with other tracking methods.