According to Section 501 of the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008, the Secretary of Defense may not begin to terminate the U-2 aircraft program until the Secretary certifies that there would be no loss of national or Department of Defense intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities in transitioning from the U-2 aircraft program to the Global Hawk RQ-4 unmanned aerial vehicle platform.
The Global Hawk is the first UAV to be certified by the FAA to file its own flight plans and use civilian air corridors in the United States with no advance notice. This potentially paves the way for a revolution in unmanned flight, including that of automatically piloted passenger airliners.
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