US President Donald Trump on Thursday announced the US will resume testing nuclear weapons for the first time in three decades, saying it would be on an “equal basis” with Russia and China.
“Now is the ‘appropriate’ time,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Washington shortly after a meeting with China’s president Xi Jinping in South Korea.
Trump first made the announcement on social media ahead of his meeting with Xi, stressing that it had to do with others.”
“Because of other countries’ testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our nuclear weapons on an equal basis,” he said in a post on Truth Social. “That process will begin immediately.”
The White House did not immediately respond to questions seeking more details, and Pentagon officials didn’t immediately respond to questions about the announcement from Trump on the nuclear missile tests.
Is the nuclear arms race back?
Trump’s astonishing announcement comes after Russian President Vladimir Putin this week announced that Moscow tested a new atomic-powered and nuclear-capable underwater drone and a new nuclear-powered cruise missile.
Putin did not announce any tests of Russia’s nuclear weapons, the last test of which occurred in 1990.
While Trump did not specifically mention the Russian tests in his post, the US leader alluded to the nuclear stockpiles controlled by both Xi and Putin, saying, “Russia is second, and China is a distant third but will be even within 5 years.”
In 2023, Putin signed a bill revoking Russia’s ratification of a global nuclear test ban, which Moscow said was needed to put Russia on par with the U.S.
The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which was adopted in 1996 and bans all nuclear explosions anywhere in the world, was signed by President Bill Clinton but never ratified by the Senate.
Russia in 2023 said it would only resume tests of its nuclear weapons if Washington did it first.