Jerome, good questions.

I suspect the poor video quality is a function of three issues:

• Keeping the drones far away from the target so targets cannot easily spot and shoot down the drone means longer lenses, wider FoVs, greater risk of obstructions / image degradation.
• Limited bandwidth available on the satellite connections that drones use means reduced resolution / higher compression
• To the extent thermal video is being used, such images are almost alwyas imprecise when it comes to identifying fine details of people or objects.

Can anyone with military drone experience comment on this?

When did the U.S go to war with Pakistan and Yemen? I missed that.

"Would the addition of a high resolution still photography camera be of any value? "

From my understanding, the problem with that is delay time. Your image could be 15 seconds or more "late" by that time a LOT has changed on the ground, relatively speaking. That's also assuming that single image is good enough to see everything you need to see. The odds of snapping 1 pic and having it be of high quality are fairly low.

Great article!

You said:

the OP seems to insinuate that decisions to fire - and what to fire upon - are made by the drone operators themselves

Its true that that is the case on his first 'fire', but wouldn't you say that on other missions he had discretion at least to call off kills based on what he did or didn't see on the screen?

Or in this following example he seems to be given quite an open-ended assignment where video quality was critical to correct assessment:

Bryant’s orders, delivered during a pre-shift mission briefing, were straightforward: a force-protection mission, acting as a “guardian angel” over a convoy of Humvees. He would search out IEDs, insurgent activity, and other threats. It was night in the U.S. and already daylight in Iraq when the convoy rolled out.

Also I have a question about this following section:

The drone crew’s attempts at radio contact were as useless as shouting at the monitor. Brandon and his pilot patched in their flight supervisor to brainstorm a new way to reach them. They typed frantically back and forth in a group chat, a string of messages that soon included a cast of superiors in the U.S. and Iraq. Minutes passed, and the convoy rolled slowly toward the glowing circle. Bryant stared at the screen, heart pounding, scarcely breathing. The lead Humvee rolled across the eye. “Nothing happens,” says Bryant. “And we’re kind of like, maybe it was a mistake. Everyone’s like Whew, good on you for spotting it, but we’re glad that it wasn’t what you thought it was.” He remembers exhaling, feeling the nervous tension flow out of him.

“And the second vehicle comes along and boom.…”

Why didn't they have the drone detonate the mine?! They were minutes in front of it. It's just like a target without a warm body! If it was a guy with a bazooka, its all over!

Mines are the Poor Man's Drones!