Taiwan's military will buy any satellite images of value to the nation -- but it is not an easy task to obtain such information, Vice Minister of National Defense Wu Shih-wen (
Wu was speaking in response to reports that Taiwan has been buying satellite photos of Chinese military facilities taken by a US commercial satellite.
Wu, who is to become the new government's Minister of National Defense, said the difficulty lies partly in the prices for the photos and partly in the limitations imposed upon Taiwan for the acquisition of highly-classified reconnaissance photos.
PHOTO: AFP
"We would like to get as many satellite photos of Chinese military installations as possible. But the problem is that the prices for the photos are high and we are subject to certain limitations concerning access to the photos," Wu said.
"Even if the photos are taken by a commercial satellite, we still can not get them in the configurations we want," he said.
Wu spoke yesterday to clarify a Washington Post report that said Taiwan has been buying photos taken by a US commercial satellite called Ikonos. The satellite was launched last September jointly by defense industry giants Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.
PHOTO: AFP
The Washington Post, quoting a scientist having access to a large number of satellite images taken by Ikonos, said the many reconnaissance photos of China clearly suggested who the buyer was, although the Taiwan government did not want to admit to it.
John Pike, a scientist with the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), who posted the satellite photos on the Web site of the FAS, is to announce today, Washington time, his assessment of China's potential for launching an air assault against Taiwan on the basis of the photos he possess.
One Taiwan intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the photos Pike posted on the FAS Web site are not of great military value to Taiwan and that they are not the ones Taiwan has been buying from Space Imaging, the joint-venture led by Lockheed Martin and Raytheon and which perates Ikonos.
PHOTO: AFP
"The photos taken by Ikonos are not of great use to Taiwan mainly because they can not meet real-time requirements for military use and cannot not penetrate cloud cover," the official said.
"The local intelligence community can have access to satellite photos of China through other channels. The National Security Bureau (NSB), for instance, gets satellite images of Chinese military facilities from US military spy satellites, such as the KH-11, which are updated every three to four hours," he said. "And if there is an emergency situation, the US military will notify us immediately."
The satellite image receiving station for the NSB is at the Central Weather Bureau, where NSB officials process the downlinked images through a supercomputer, the official said.
PHOTO: AFP
At the headquarters of each of the three armed services, the official said, there is also a satellite receiving station, which gets images downlinked from French Spot satellites via the remote sensing center of National Central University.
"As far as I know, it is companies fronting for the military which are buying photos from Space Imaging. The number ordered does not seem to be great," said Chang Li-teh (張立德), an editor with Defense Technology Monthly magazine.
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