U.S. President Donald Trump, ahead of his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday, said he has instructed the Department of Defence to immediately resume testing nuclear weapons on an “equal basis” with other nuclear powers, something the U.S. has not done in 33 years.
“Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis. That process will begin immediately,” Trump said on his social media platform, Truth Social, ahead of the meeting with Xi in South Korea.
“Russia is second, and China is a distant third, but will be even within 5 years,” Trump noted.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Russia had successfully tested a Poseidon nuclear-powered super torpedo that military analysts say is capable of devastating coastal regions by triggering vast radioactive ocean swells.
Last U.S. test in 1992
As Trump has toughened both his rhetoric and his stance on Russia, Putin has publicly flexed his nuclear muscles with the test of a new Burevestnik cruise missile on Oct. 21 and nuclear launch drills on Oct. 22.
The U.S. last tested a nuclear weapon in 1992.
Tests provide evidence of what any new nuclear weapon will do — and whether older weapons still work.
The Trump administration will furlough about 1,400 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration, the agency that manages the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal, due to the government shutdown, the Department of Energy said.
Apart from providing technical data, such a test would be seen in Russia and China as a deliberate assertion of U.S. strategic power.
The United States opened the nuclear era in July 1945 with the test of a 20-kiloton atomic bomb at Alamogordo, N.M., and then dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 to end the Second World War.
