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United States President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he had directed the Pentagon to begin nuclear weapons testing at the same level as China and Russia—just moments before holding a major summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
This development follows Russian President Vladimir Putin’s statement on Wednesday that Moscow had successfully tested a nuclear-capable, nuclear-powered underwater drone, in open defiance of Washington’s warnings.
“Because of other countries' testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis,” Trump wrote in a social media message that specifically mentioned Russia and China.
Trump further pointed out that the United States possesses more nuclear weapons than any other nation and praised his own administration’s efforts to carry out “a complete update and renovation of existing weapons.”
He added that “Russia is second, and China is a distant third but will be even within five years.”
According to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), there are nine nuclear-armed countries: Russia, the United States, China, France, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea.
Out of the estimated 12,331 nuclear warheads listed by ICAN, more than 5,500 belong to Russia, while the United States holds 5,044.
Trump did not disclose the exact type or nature of the tests to be conducted but stated that the programme would “begin immediately.”
On Wednesday, Putin had announced that Russia had successfully tested a nuclear-capable, nuclear-powered underwater drone, marking its second weapons test in recent days.
During a televised address from a military hospital treating Russian soldiers wounded in Ukraine, Putin claimed there was “no way to intercept” the unmanned drone torpedo called “Poseidon.”
He explained that Poseidon could move faster than regular submarines, dive deeper, and reach any continent in the world.
Following an earlier cruise missile test on Sunday, Trump rebuked Putin, saying he should stop the war in Ukraine “instead of testing missiles.”
A scheduled meeting between Trump and Putin in Budapest was cancelled last week.
Between 1945—when the first atomic bomb was tested in New Mexico on 16 July—and 1992, the United States conducted 1,054 nuclear tests and carried out two atomic bombings on Japan during the Second World War.
The most recent US nuclear explosion took place in September 1992, with a 20-kiloton underground detonation at the Nevada Nuclear Security Site.
In October of that same year, then-President George H.W. Bush implemented a moratorium on further nuclear testing, which subsequent administrations maintained. Nuclear testing was later replaced by non-nuclear and subcritical experiments supported by advanced computer simulations.
Trump is currently visiting South Korea to meet Xi, marking the first face-to-face encounter between the leaders of the world’s two largest economies during Trump’s second term in office.
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