The capabilities of cameras are remarkably poor compared to human vision. Building a camera that covers a large area with the ability to resolve a small object

The capabilities of cameras are remarkably poor compared to human vision. Building a camera that covers a large area with the ability to resolve a small object at a mile distance is an expensive proposition, and I don't think the military has tried it. And, in general, aviation is averse to new technology and the military is averse to new technology. Combine the two and you get the present situation where most military aircraft have only limited imaging. The police helicopters have very nice stabilized cameras but they're on the bottom (can't look upward more than a small amount) and hard to aim at things moving in the air. It seems like the drone was intentionally maneuvering to be difficult to track with a camera... the pilots both report it hovering around 1k feet directly above them, which is pretty much the place that it's least likely the helicopter would be able to image it.