Abstract: Airborne imaging polarimeter is one of the important research techniques in the remote sensing fields. The high-precision polarization controller based on the birefringence effect of liquid crystal is developed and cali-brated. Then, a miniaturized airborne imaging polarimeter (integrating liquid crystal polarization controller, optical detector, imaging memorizer, and electrical system) is built and fixed on small unmanned aerial vehicles to detect specifical targets. The experimental results show that the stability of the Stokes polarization parameter of the liquid crystal polarization controller is better than 98%, and the small airborne polarization imaging system could be used to effectively suppress the background interference and improve the contour extraction ability and target recognition ability of the low contrast targets. This study provides an effective technical approach for expanding the polarized imaging applications in target surveillance, environmental monitoring, crop investigating, and so on.