Expert: It is very difficult for the US and Israel to destroy Iran's missile capabilities.

Reference News Network, March 6 According to a report on the website of the American "New York Times" on March 2, U.S. President Trump stated on the 2nd that destroying Iran's missile capabilities is one of the primary objectives of a U.S. attack on Iran. However, for the U.S. and Israeli military, locating and destroying Iran's entire stockpile of ballistic missiles and its production facilities may prove to be extremely challenging.

The report states that airstrikes alone cannot destroy the plans and technologies for manufacturing these weapons. It has been proven that Iran is adept at acquiring the equipment needed to restart production lines and has placed at least some of this equipment in underground fortified structures.

Furthermore, it has been shown that Iran can disassemble ballistic missiles into smaller components, making it easier to smuggle them to proxy armed groups for reassembly and use—this could make the task of searching for missiles increasingly difficult.

In January of this year, Israeli officials stated that after the "War of the 12th" in June of last year, Iran had essentially rebuilt its ballistic missile program. The U.S. Central Command stated on social media on the 1st that it had deployed B-2 stealth bombers to drop 2,000-pound (approximately 900 kilograms) bombs on Iran's "fortified ballistic missile facilities." Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Kane stated that the facilities are located underground.

For decades, Iran has developed a wide variety of missiles capable of striking various targets far beyond its borders, including various types of ballistic missiles. Ballistic missiles ascend into high altitudes along a parabolic trajectory and then reach speeds several times the speed of sound due to gravity. Iran's longest-range ballistic missiles can strike targets approximately 1,200 miles (about 1,900 kilometers) away.

On the 1st, Israel claimed to have destroyed about 200 Iranian ballistic missile launchers and damaged several dozen others, but the Iranian military continues to launch ballistic missiles at neighboring countries. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated on the 2nd that the U.S. will continue to strike Iran until all of its objectives are achieved, including the destruction of Iran's ballistic missile capabilities.

Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said, "The military is doing everything possible to strike these targets. We may have a good idea of their locations, but destroying all targets and confirming their complete destruction from a damage assessment perspective is extremely difficult—especially through airstrikes alone."

Karako believes that to eliminate 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 suspected facilities.

Iran has built a vast stockpile of ballistic missiles, including "short-range" missiles with ranges of approximately 30 to 190 miles, "medium-range" missiles with ranges of 190 to 620 miles, and "intermediate-range" missiles with maximum ranges of about 1,240 miles.

According to a report by TASS on March 2, Alexander Stepanov, a military expert at the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, believes that the weapons used by the U.S. and Israel are unlikely to destroy the underground arsenals of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

He stated, "The various weapons used by the U.S. and Israel cannot harm the underground arsenals of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps."

According to Iranian sources, the Iranian military has dispersed its missile stockpiles across multiple cities in the country and has stored these missiles 500 meters underground.

Stepanov stated that even the U.S. GBU-57 bunker buster would not be able to penetrate Iran's underground arsenals.

He also mentioned that Iran's arsenals are located within rock formations, which are as solid as fortified military infrastructure. This expert explained, "It is likely that even nuclear weapons would not be able to destroy permanent underground strategic weapon arsenals. The intricate underground military infrastructure is now also a fundamental condition for Tehran to conduct counterattacks."

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