The modeling of underwater kite movement is carried out based on bead model. This kite model consists of a rigid kite and a beaded tether model. This kite model with beaded tether (KMBT) can describe the trajectory and attitude of the kite under the tension of a flexible tether. The kite body is regarded as a rigid body and the 6-dof motion model is built. The kite tether is regarded as a flexible body, which is discrete as interconnecting tether segments of equal length, and each tether segment is modeled as weightless tether. Each connection point of two tether segments is configured with a mass bead. The particle motion modeling of the beads are carried out, and the flexible tether motion is described by the motion of the beads. In the modeling, the attitude movement stability of the kite body under the action of the tether tension is studied. The influence of kite bridle length on the motion stability is analyzed. The underwater experiment is performed, and the simulation results of the KMBT and a kite model without tether model are compared with the experiment results. The results show that KMBT can describe the motion of the kite more accurately. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.