To address the issue of the route planning of reconnaissance UAVs for multiple mission targets in the mission area, a route planning method is proposed based on improved Imperialism Competitive Algorithm (ICA) for multi-target reconnaissance.The problem of the reconnaissance order of multiple targets in the mission area is transformed into the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) model, and the optimal trajectory of each order is calculated quickly by using the improved Intelligent Single Particle Optimizer (ISPO) algorithm. The value related to the track length and the complexity of the track is the power of the state, and ICA is used to solve the problem.The simulation results show that the proposed method can work out the approximately optimal reconnaissance order and the trajectory satisfying the flight performance constraints.