Reference News Network, March 6 report. According to the website of the U.S. "New York Times" on March 2, U.S. President Trump said on March 2 that destroying Iran's missile capabilities is one of the main objectives of the U.S. attack on Iran. However, for the U.S. and Israeli military forces, finding and destroying Iran's entire ballistic missile arsenal and production facilities may be extremely challenging.

The report states that air strikes alone cannot destroy the planning and technology behind these weapons. It has been proven that Iran is skilled at obtaining the equipment needed to restart production lines and placing at least some of the equipment in underground reinforced facilities.

Facts also show that Iran can disassemble ballistic missiles into smaller parts, making it easier to smuggle them to proxy armed groups and reassemble them for use - which could make the search for missiles even more difficult.

In January this year, Israeli officials said that after the "12-Day War" in June last year, Iran had basically rebuilt its ballistic missile program. On March 1, the U.S. Central Command posted on social media that it had deployed B-2 stealth bombers to drop 2000-pound (approximately 900 kg) bombs on Iran's "reinforced ballistic missile facilities." Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine stated that the facilities were underground.

For decades, Iran has developed a wide range of missiles capable of striking various targets far abroad, including various types of ballistic missiles. Ballistic missiles follow an arched trajectory into the upper atmosphere and then use gravity to reach speeds several times the speed of sound. The farthest-range ballistic missile of Iran can strike targets about 1200 miles (approximately 1900 kilometers) away.

Israel claimed on March 1 that it had destroyed about 200 ballistic missile launchers in Iran and damaged dozens more, but the Iranian military continues to fire ballistic missiles toward neighboring countries. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on March 2 that the United States will continue to strike Iran until achieving all its goals, including destroying Iran's ballistic missile capabilities.

Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said: "The military is doing everything possible to strike these targets. We may know their locations, but it is extremely difficult to destroy all targets and confirm from a damage assessment perspective that they have all been destroyed - especially through aerial attacks alone."

Karoko believes that to clear Iran's underground missiles and production facilities, it may be necessary to deploy U.S. or Israeli special forces on the ground to verify known or suspicious facilities.

Iran has built a large-scale ballistic missile arsenal, including "short-range" missiles with a range of about 30 to 190 miles, "medium-range" missiles with a range of 190 to 620 miles, and "intermediate-range" missiles with a maximum range of about 1240 miles.

According to TASS on March 2, Russian military expert Alexander Stepanov from the Institute of National Economy and State Administration believes that U.S. and Israeli weapons are unlikely to destroy the underground weapon depots of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran.

He said: "Various weapons used by the U.S. and Israel cannot harm the underground weapon depots of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran."

According to Iranian sources, the Iranian military has dispersed the missile depots across multiple cities in the country and stored these missiles deep underground, up to 500 meters below the surface.

Stepanov said that even the U.S. GBU-57 bunker buster bomb cannot affect Iran's underground weapon depots.

He also said that Iran's weapon depots are located in rock layers, and their strength is no less than reinforced military infrastructure. The expert explained: "It is likely that even nuclear weapons cannot destroy permanent underground strategic weapon depots. The complex underground military infrastructure is now also the basis for Tehran's ability to retaliate."

Stepanov said that this proves that Iran's military industry has continuously stockpiled missile-type weapons during the recent development cycle, including various models and several upgraded versions of missiles, such as the solid-fuel intermediate-range ballistic missile "Castle Destroyer" and the "Conqueror"-2 hypersonic ballistic missile. (Translated by Zhu Jie, Li Ran)

Original: toutiao.com/article/7613982463597052431/

Statement: This article represents the views of the author himself.