Apparently the Navy can’t afford iPhones
Take your iPhone tonight and try to shoot video of a plane at 5K feet - much less 10NM - and let me know how it turns out.
If you’ve ever had the opportunity to go to the air races or an air show, you might notice what kind of gear the professional photographers who are there are using. Here’s a hint: they’re not using iPhones with TINY 12MP camera sensors with the equivalent of a 26 mm-equivalent f/1.6 lens on it. Instead, they’re likely using a DSLR with the ISO turned up as high as it can and lens with a minimum focal length of 70mm and more likely, something in excess of 200mm. Oh, and their shooting in perfect daylight.
iPhones are designed to shoot people, the focal length, the aperture the auto-focus, the machine-learning have all been optimized to shoot subjects at 5’ to 40’.
You know what else isn’t optimized for taking studio-quality photographs? Naval targeting sensors. No one needs the fine detail of a potential target to paint it with IR or Radar to range it for distance and bearing. People are watching videos of MFDs displaying radar and FLIR and can’t understand why it doesn’t look like the latest Michael Bay film. It’s laughably ignorant.