Deeply Buried Structures
One of the easiest ways for nations to protect weapons of mass destruction, command posts, and other critical structures is to bury them deeply, perhaps enlarging natural caves or disused mines. Deep burial is not only a means of protection against physical attack, as even without the use of nuclear weapons, there are deeply penetrating precision guided bombs that can attack them. Deep burial, with appropriate concealment during construction, is a way to avoid the opponent's knowing the buried facility's position well enough to direct precision guided weapons against it.
Finding deeply buried structures, therefore, is a critical military requirement. The usual first step in finding a deep structure is IMINT, especially using hyperspectral IMINT sensors to help eliminate concealment. "Hyperspectral images can help reveal information not obtainable through other forms of imagery intelligence such as the moisture content of soil. This data can also help distinguish camouflage netting from natural foliage." Still, a facility dug under a busy city would be extremely hard to find during construction. When the opponent knows that it is suspected that a deeply buried facility exists, there can be a variety of decoys and lures, such as buried heat sources to confuse infrared sensors, or simply digging holes and covering them, with nothing inside.
MASINT using as acoustic, seismic, and magnetic sensors would appear to have promise, but the reality of these sensors is that they must be fairly close to the target. Magnetic Anomaly Detection (MAD) is used, in antisubmarine water, for final localization before attack. The existence of the submarine is usually established through passive listening and refined with directional passive sensors and active sonar.
Once these sensors, as well as HUMINT and other sources, have failed, there is promise, for surveying large areas and deeply concealed facilities, using gravitimetric sensors. Gravity sensors are a new field, but military requirements are making it important while the technology to do it is becoming possible.
Read more about this topic: Geophysical MASINT, Military Requirements
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