In order to improve the tracking performance of gyro stabilized platform with disturbances and uncertainties, an adaptive nonlinear control based on neural networks and reduced-order disturbance observer for disturbance compensation is developed. First the reduced-order disturbance observer estimates the disturbance directly. The error of the estimated disturbance caused by parameter variation and measurement noise is then approximated by neural networks. The phase compensation is also introduced to the proposed control law for the desired sinusoidal tracking. The stability of the proposed scheme is analyzed by the Lyapunov criterion. Experimental results show the validity of the proposed control approach.