With the wide application of airborne photoelectric stabilized platforms in the field of national defense and military, the requirement of the modern weapon system for the control technology of the airborne photoelectric stabilized platform is getting higher and higher. Therefore, based on the fractional-order control and the principle of disturbance observers, a fractional-order control method based on disturbance observation is proposed to improve the performance of the airborne photoelectric stabilized platform control system. This paper gives the corresponding closed-loop control system structure and the controller design method. Then, the input and output characteristics and anti-interference ability are studied. In the simulation experiments of step response, sinusoidal tracking, disturbance suppression and robustness, the proposed controller performs well. Simulation results show that the proposed controller has the characteristics of fast response and strong robustness of fractional-order control, and also shows the strong anti-interference ability of the disturbance observer. The purpose of improving the performance of the airborne photoelectric stabilized platform control system can be achieved.