The facilities include a synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) satellite and a signals intelligence (SIGINT) aircraft, it says in an article to be published on January 14.

"Taiwan has a major intelligence blind spot regarding what the ground forces of the People's Liberation Army does," 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 750-kilogram (1,650-pound), remote-sensing satellite will operate at an altitude of 891 kilometers (535 miles) and should provide imagery with a two-meter 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, JDW 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.

China has repeatedly threatened to invade Taiwan, which it claims as a renegade province, prompting the island to seek more sophisticated weaponry.

In terms of the Taiwan Relations Act passed by the US Congress when Washington switched its diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979, the United States is obliged to provide the island with sufficient weapons to defend itself.

All rights reserved. � 2004 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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