Abstract: The vector information of the acoustic field which contains the bearing of the source can be measured by the particle velocity sensors,and this makes it possible for the vector hydrophone linear array (VHLA) sonars to have the ability of solving the notorious port/starboard ambiguity suffered by the scalar single-line array. In this paper,two beamformers based on the generalized cardioid processing (GCP) and the sound intensity processing (SIP) are analyzed theoretically to explore the performance of port/starboard discrimination,and the results are compared to the experimental data obtained in sea trials. Analysis shows that the adaptive beamformer outperforms the convectional one. Furthermore,with respect to the ability of signal detection,GCP is a better one for the VHLA signal processing.