Are There Secret Military Tunnels Under America?

On October 7, 2023, the IDF had a brigade of special operations forces engineers, the Yahalom unit, fully equipped with technologies and tactics to accomplish the full range of underground warfare tasks, from detecting, securing, and mapping tunnels and bunkers to exploiting, clearing, neutralizing, and destroying them. This unit has spent decades researching, developing, testing, and purchasing technologies to overcome the challenge of military operations underground.

Underground Facilities: Intelligence and Targeting Issues

The digging itself, the innovative ways Hamas has made use of the tunnels and the group’s survival underground for this long have been unprecedented." A 2024 Royal United Services Institute report notes that Hamas utilizes two distinct types of tunnels: deep, sophisticated ones for senior ...

In Sydney in 1941, the Royal Australian Navy excavated a series of tunnels to shelter over 2,500 men working at the naval base from air raids, and as well as to transport guns and ammunition within the tunnels after the Australian government and people expected a Japanese invasion of Australia. There are other military fortifications in coastal Sydney that feature a tunnel warfare system, such as the Georges Head Battery (which was constructed in 1801 and was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register in 1999), Lower Georges Heights Commanding Position (which was built in 1877 and be

Three levels of tunnels were eventually built. During the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict, the Israeli military uncovered and destroyed 32 cross-border tunnels that went on for miles beneath Gaza and reached into Israeli territory.

Hamas' elaborate tunnels in Gaza have brought attention to underground warfare, but it's a tactic used by many other potential U.S. adversaries.

Such tunnels would disrupt electrical, sewer and water lines and would cross thousands of private properties. That would be hard, if not impossible, to hide. Also, the Defense Department says it's not so. This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one. Washington Post Remember Jade Helm 15, the controversial military exercise? It’s over. Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online.

Perhaps the most surprising development of the recent war between Israel and Gaza was the discovery of the sophisticated network of tunnels that Hamas had quietly developed in the preceding years. The dark, low-tech tunnels running underneath Gaza offered a stark juxtaposition to the modern artillery Israel deployed on the surface. But if the tunnels hinted at an older kind of warfare, that doesn’t mean they should be dismissed as a military curiosity.

The U.S. Department of Defense estimates there are around 10,000 hardened or deeply buried underground military facilities worldwide​. North Korea alone accounts for roughly 4,800 of these subterranean sites.