This paper addresses the use of a data analysis tool, known as robust principal component analysis (RPCA), in the context of change detection (CD) in ultrawideband (UWB) very high-frequency (VHF) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. The method considers image pairs of the same scene acquired at different time instants. The CD method aims to maximize the probability of detection (PD) and minimize the false alarm rate (FAR). Such aim fits into a multiobjective optimization problem, since maximizing the probability of detection generally implies an increase in the number of false alarms. In that sense, varying the RPCA regularization parameter leads to PD variation with respect to FAR, which is known as receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. To evaluate the proposed method, the CARABAS-II data set was considered. The experimental results show that RPCA via principal component pursuit (PCP) can provide a good trade-off between PD and FAR. A comparison between the results obtained with the proposed method and a classical CD algorithm based on the likelihood ratio test provides the pros and cons of the proposed method. © 2020 by the authors.