Infrared small target detection is considerably challenging due to the few pixels in targets, low signal-to-noise ratio, and complex background. In this article, we propose an effective attention-guided feature enhancement network (AFE-Net), which can leverage the local and nonlocal features of targets and background in infrared images. The AFE-Net consists of three key modules, namely encoder and decoder interactive guidance (EDIG) module, cascading false alarm removal (CFAR) module, and random scale input (RSI) …