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The Iranians had solved the [[air defense]] problem with a new [[strategy]]: underground fortifications. The US defense and intelligence structure had been sounding the alarm about their inability to overcome this "passive defense" for decades. Deeply Buried Targets, a declassified 2001 report to [[Congress]] by the [[Department of Defense]], warned:
The Iranians had solved the [[air defense]] problem with a new [[strategy]]: underground fortifications. The US defense and intelligence structure had been sounding the alarm about their inability to overcome this "passive defense" for decades. Deeply Buried Targets, a declassified 2001 report to [[Congress]] by the [[Department of Defense]], warned:
{{Cquote|There are no easy answers to either the HDBT [Hardened Deeply Buried Target] or [[WMD]] Agent Defeat challenges, and certainly no 'silver bullets.' … Even with the current strategy and acquisition initiatives, the [[United States]] will still not be able to hold all known or suspected HDBTs at risk for destruction, especially the deep underground facilities …Defeat of most of these facilities with conventional means—in the traditional sense of physical destruction—is impossible… The [1991] [[Persian Gulf War]] and the series of conflicts in the [[Balkans]] revealed that facility protection, by hardening, concealment, and defenses, remains an effective response to the [[technology]] advantages in [[intelligence]] and [[weapon]]ry enjoyed by the United States and its allies.<ref>U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Department of Energy, [https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB372/docs/Underground-DeeplyBuried.pdf “Report to Congress on the Defeat of Hard and Deeply Buried Targets,”] submitted pursuant to Section 1044 of the Floyd D. Spence National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001 (P.L. 106-398), July 2001 (24 pp.; declassified; hosted by the National Security Archive).</ref>}}
{{Cquote|There are no easy answers to either the HDBT [Hardened Deeply Buried Target] or [[WMD]] Agent Defeat challenges, and certainly no 'silver bullets.' … Even with the current strategy and acquisition initiatives, the [[United States]] will still not be able to hold all known or suspected HDBTs at risk for destruction, especially the deep underground facilities …Defeat of most of these facilities with conventional means—in the traditional sense of physical destruction—is impossible… The [1991] [[Persian Gulf War]] and the series of conflicts in the [[Balkans]] revealed that facility protection, by hardening, concealment, and defenses, remains an effective response to the [[technology]] advantages in [[intelligence]] and [[weapon]]ry enjoyed by the United States and its allies.<ref>U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Department of Energy, [https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB372/docs/Underground-DeeplyBuried.pdf “Report to Congress on the Defeat of Hard and Deeply Buried Targets,”] submitted pursuant to Section 1044 of the Floyd D. Spence National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001 (P.L. 106-398), July 2001 (24 pp.; declassified; hosted by the National Security Archive).</ref>}}
The Iranians made rapid progress in their efforts to bury their most important military assets. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) understood fully that Iran had developed a complex and robust defensive doctrine designed from the ground up to give it an advantage in war with the United States, specifically, and said so in their assessment of Iranian military power published in 2019:<ref>
Defense Intelligence Agency, [https://www.dia.mil/Portals/110/Images/News/Military_Powers_Publications/Iran_Military_Power_LR.pdf "Iran Military Power: Ensuring Regime Survival and Securing Regional Dominance,"] DIA-Q-00055-A, 2019.</ref>
{{Cquote|Denial and deception (D&D) is a core component of [[Iranian]] [[military]] doctrine, and Iran uses D&D techniques extensively to reduce the vulnerability and increase the survivability of its military forces. To apply these techniques across the military, [[Tehran]] has established what it calls a “passive defense” doctrine. The effort was based on lessons learned from past military conflicts, including [[U.S.]] operations in the [[Middle East]] and the 2006 Israel-Hizballah conflict. Key Iranian passive defense measures include [[camouflage]] and concealment, force dispersals, underground facilities, and highly mobile units. For example, Iran configures some military vehicles to resemble civilian trucks….Iran has the largest underground facility (UGF) program in the Middle East. Based on the central pillars of Iran’s passive defense doctrine, Tehran has invested heavily in constructing UGFs to conceal and protect critical [[military]] and [[civilian]] [[infrastructure]] throughout the country. Iran designed and built these facilities to support various aspects of its defense industries, key [[nuclear]] infrastructure, and military forces, including [[naval]] sites, [[missile]] bases, and equipment storage.}}
===Missiles===
===Missiles===