The US is pressing Taiwan to procure two intelligence-gathering devices to correct an intelligence "blind spot" over the activities of China's army, Jane's Defence Weekly says.
The devices include a synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) satellite and a signals intelligence (SIGINT) aircraft, it says in an article to be published on Wednesday.
"Taiwan has a major intelligence blind spot regarding what the ground forces of the People's Liberation Army do," a US defense department source told the magazine.
"The procurement [from the US] of a SAR satellite is highly encouraged by the US military," the source said.
Taiwan's existing satellite reconnaissance capability is limited, depending largely on commercially obtained imagery, with the sources including the Canadian RADARSAT, French SPOT, Israeli EROS and US Ikonos, the magazine says.
However this will be boosted when Taiwan launches its own ROCSAT-2 research satellite early this year, it says.
The 750kg remote-sensing satellite will operate at an altitude of 891km and should provide imagery with a 2m resolution, but its level of precision is unknown.
Without an airborne SIGINT platform, Taiwan cannot intercept high frequency communication signals from China as its own ground SIGINT facilities are hindered by the curvature of the earth and the line-of-sight propagation of the signals, Jane's says.
Responding to a request from Taiwan in 2002, Washington has supplied Taipei with details of two airborne SIGINT options based on a Raytheon or Cessna aircraft, but Taipei has yet to pursue an acquisition.
"Significant elements within Taiwan's air force were interested in these aircraft but met with opposition from within the Ministry of National Defense ... As a result, neither program has gone through," the US source said.
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