Application of the basic ant colony algorithm for anti-ship missile path planning problem has such shortcomings as slow convergence speed, long computation time, and easily falling into local optimum. Concerning these shortcomings, roulette selection strategy, elite strategy and path optimization strategy were adopted on traditional ant colony algorithm to optimize it, and the optimization algorithm was applied in anti-ship missile route planning. At the same time, by means of limiting the feasible course of anti-ship missile, the maximum search range for route planning was reduced. Simulation results show that the anti-ship missile route planning based on improved ant colony algorithm not only shortens the optimal route length but also speeds up the convergence rate of the optimal route search process.