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U.S. spy plane conducts test flight over Japan+
(Japan Economic Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)TOKYO, March 4_(Kyodo) _ The U.S. Air Force flew its Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle in Japanese airspace last month, government sources said Saturday.
Washington may have wanted to demonstrate the Global Hawk's performance to Tokyo, which plans to introduce the remote-controlled, high-endurance spy plane in fiscal 2007 in order to improve its intelligence-gathering capabilities, some sources said.
After it took off from Australia, the airplane flew over Japan's Nansei Islands, south of Kyushu, for about one hour, the sources said.
The U.S. side submitted the flight plan to Japan beforehand, and the plane did not have any weapons installed, they said.
Global Hawk was developed by Northrop Grumman Corp. and it costs about $45 million.
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