This paper deals with the nonlinear transient vibration of composite sandwich plates with an electrorheological (ER) fluid core. The initial excitation is a distributed transverse load or the flutter instability due to supersonic airflow. The Bingham plastic model is adopted to accurately model the post-yield behavior of the ER material. . The first order piston theory is used for evaluating the aerodynamic forces. The von Karman strain-displacement relations are employed to account for moderately large deflection. The Hamilton’s principle is applied in conjunction with the finite element method to derive the equations of motion. The solution is then obtained through use the Newmark time integration scheme. Numerical investigations are conducted to study the effect of ER core layer on the vibration characteristics of the sandwich plate. The influence of the electric filed strength, ER core thickness, initial excitation and the boundary conditions on the settling time of transient vibration are also examined. The results show that the damping of transient vibration is significantly improved as the electric field applied to the ER layer, but the amplitude of post-flutter oscillations remains unchanged.