At the White House just last Monday, President Donald Trump stated that destroying Iran’s missile capabilities was one of the primary objectives of the U.S. attacks in the country.

However, locating and destroying Iran’s entire ballistic missile arsenal, as well as their production facilities, could prove extremely difficult for the U.S. and Israeli militaries, which jointly began striking Iran on February 28.

Airstrikes alone cannot “erase” the plans and know-how for building these weapons. Iran has demonstrated the ability to secure the necessary equipment to restart production lines, placing at least some of them underground in fortified facilities.

The Iranians have also shown they can disassemble ballistic missiles into smaller components, which can be smuggled more easily to proxy forces and then reassembled for use—making it even harder to locate all of them.

In January, Israeli officials reported that Iran had largely rebuilt its ballistic missile program following the 12-day war last June. The U.S. Central Command also stated on social media Sunday that it had used B-2 stealth bombers to strike “ballistic missile facilities” with 2,000-pound bombs.

General Dan Keane, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, admitted Monday that these facilities were underground.

For decades, Iran has developed a wide range of missiles capable of striking targets well beyond its borders. These include different types of ballistic missiles that follow a curved trajectory high into the atmosphere and then, using gravity, reach speeds multiple times the speed of sound.

Iran’s longest-range ballistic missile can hit targets approximately 1,931 kilometers away.

In 2019, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) reported that Iran had “the largest and most diverse ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East.”

On Sunday, Israel claimed it had destroyed around 200 Iranian missile launchers and damaged dozens more, but Iranian forces continue to launch ballistic missiles toward neighboring countries. In Washington on Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. would continue striking Iran until its objectives are achieved, including the destruction of Iran’s ballistic capabilities.

“The military is doing everything it can to hit these things,” said Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). “We probably have a pretty good picture of where they are, but the ability to neutralize all of them and then assess—post-strike—that you’ve succeeded will be difficult, especially if you’re trying to do it from the air.”

Eliminating Iran’s underground missiles and production facilities, Karako added, could require deploying U.S. or Israeli special forces on the ground to inspect known or suspected sites.

From 1987 to 2019, the United States was bound by the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and, as a result, abandoned much of the Pentagon’s non-nuclear ballistic missiles.

After the U.S. and Russia officially withdrew from the treaty, the Pentagon accelerated the development of new ballistic missiles, such as the Precision Strike Missile, which in tests has flown beyond the 499-kilometer limit that was previously prohibited.

Unlike the United States, Iran—never a party to the INF Treaty—has built a ballistic missile arsenal categorized as “short-range” (48–306 km), “medium-range” (306–998 km), and “intermediate-range” (up to about 1,996 km).

President Trump said in his State of the Union address last Tuesday that he was concerned Iran might develop “intercontinental” ballistic missiles (ICBMs). However, classified U.S. intelligence assessments disputed this, stating Iran is at least a decade away from developing ICBMs.

The DIA’s 2019 report explained that Iran seeks ballistic missiles partly because it lacks a modern air force. Missiles provide the country with “long-range strike capability to deter its regional adversaries—particularly the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia—from attacking Iran.”

One of the clearest insights into Iran’s missile program came from intercepting small boats smuggling weapons from Iran to Houthi fighters in Yemen.

According to a DIA report in February 2024, U.S. and Yemeni forces intercepted 18 vessels carrying smuggled Iranian weapons, including ballistic missiles, to the Houthis between 2015 and 2023.

The Houthi arsenal included several Iranian ballistic missiles, such as the Fateh-110 (range 306 km), Qiam-1 (range 1,207 km), and Shahab-3 (range 1,931 km).

The DIA’s 2019 report noted that Tehran’s desire to maintain a “strategic counterbalance” to the U.S. could eventually drive efforts to develop ICBMs.

Focusing on locating and destroying ballistic missiles from the air is not new for the Pentagon.

During Operation Desert Storm in 1991, the U.S. military formed a special task force to locate Iraqi short-range “Scud” missiles. However, the effort “had remarkably limited success,” according to a later CIA report.

The report noted that allied pilots were “notoriously overconfident” about the success of their missions hunting Scuds.