Incidentally, it seems rather odd that by End of Evangelion, all pretense that the Second Impact was caused by a meteor is completely discarded.

Governments of stronger countries by that time are more or less aware that meteor is a lie. JSSDF officers receive some knowledge together with orders.

But once inside the Geofront it was only a matter of a few minutes to reach Lilith. The "pyramid" is not that hard to break. Zeruel only had to use its beam. He also destroyed 18 out of 22 layers with one attack, Ramiel need about 27 minutes for each of them(490 minutes for 18). N...

In episode 6 when Ramiel pierced Geofront Misato reacted as he(she? it?) was meters from Lilith. He still had to drill through that pyramid and all those defensive layers beneath it, which would take a lot of time.