For aerial images with poor contrast and color fidelity due to foggy and hazy weathers, this paper proposes a technique of haze removal for aerial degraded images based on the dark-channel prior and the physical model to improve the visibility of vision system in an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. From the viewpoints of image restoration and image enhancement, the optimized models of global haze removal and self-adapting contract extending are established, respectively. Using the method, a high quality haze-free image can be recovered and the thickness of the haze can be also established. The experimental results on a variety of outdoor haze images demonstrate that it can enhance the contrast and color definition of hazy degraded images fast and efficiently and can achieve satisfactory visual effects. Moreover, the method overcomes the Kaiming He’s drawback of more time consuming, and the aver-age processing time is 10% that of the traditional method.It provides a theoretical reference for the real-time haze removal processing in engineering projects.