Fact Check: US Does NOT Have 1,477 Deep Underground Military Bases Around World

Fact Check

  • by: Courtney Kealy
Fact Check: US Does NOT Have 1,477 Deep Underground Military Bases Around World No-Basis Bases

Does the United States have 1,477 deep underground military bases around the world? No, that's not true: According to a duty officer at U.S. Defense Press Operations, "That claim is not true."

The claim, which was originally on TikTok, reappeared as a Facebook post on August 5, 2022, under the title "Bet you your teachers and professors don't know and or teach about these things going on in our country. Why wouldn't this be public knowledge?" An unidentified narrator for a video with the claim says:

... ACTIVE DEEP UNDERGROUND MILITARY BASES IN THE UNITED STATES. THERE'S 1,477 OF THEM WORLDWIDE ...

This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:

Screen Shot 2022-08-10 at 3.30.06 PM.png

Facebook screenshot

(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Wed Aug 10 20:30:06 2022 UTC)

Lead Stories asked the Pentagon duty officer if there was any more information and received an email saying:

We have nothing further to add.

A senior adviser with the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies spoke to Lead Stories on the phone on August 10, 2022.

Mark F. Cancian, a retired Marine colonel who served on active duty and in the reserves for over three decades, says there are a few military bases underground in the U.S. He has "actually been to some of these facilities."

But, he added, there are none internationally and none are connected by any kind of railway system:

There's Cheyenne Mountain and Raven Rock, sometimes called Site R and those are indeed, underground cities. I have been to Site R and it is a city inside a mountain. It is not connected underground with any other facility.

He added:

The United States has about 400 ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] silos, which are underground and about 40 command and control bunkers associated with those ICBMs. Those are also underground but they are not connected underground ... and they are controlled by the Air Force.

Want to inform others about the accuracy of this story?

See who is sharing it (it might even be your friends...) and leave the link in the comments.:


  Courtney Kealy

Courtney Kealy is a writer and fact-checker at Lead Stories. A graduate of Columbia University’s School of Journalism, she specializes in national and foreign affairs with more than two decades experience in the Middle East. Her work has appeared on FOX News, AlJazeera America, ABC News, the New York Times, Marie Claire, Time and Newsweek.

Read more about or contact Courtney Kealy

About Us

International Fact-Checking Organization Meta Third-Party Fact Checker

Lead Stories is a fact checking website that is always looking for the latest false, misleading, deceptive or inaccurate stories, videos or images going viral on the internet.
Spotted something? Let us know!.

Lead Stories is a:


@leadstories

Subscribe to our newsletter

* indicates required

Please select all the ways you would like to hear from Lead Stories LLC:

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. For information about our privacy practices, please visit our website.

We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By clicking below to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy practices here.

Most Read

Most Recent

Share your opinion