President Trump orders restart of nuclear weapons testing after 33-year hiatus
President Donald Trump has directed the Pentagon to resume nuclear testing after a decades-long hiatus.
When it comes to nuclear weapons strategy, stability is the goal.
However, President Donald Trump’s flurry of announcements regarding nuclear tests and nuclear submarines on October 29, during a visit to South Korea, could turn the world of nuclear weapons upside down.
It’s unclear what President Trump meant by ordering the Pentagon to resume nuclear weapons testing “immediately,” but nuclear weapons experts and foreign governments alike were shocked. The move could end a nearly three-decade period in which the world’s major nuclear powers have not detonated a nuclear weapon.
Paul Dean, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for arms control, said Trump’s ambiguous statements could increase the risk of nuclear conflict because “adversaries and allies alike are having a hard time understanding and interpreting what this means.”
President Trump’s earlier announcement of a joint nuclear submarine program with South Korea, now overshadowed by his comments about nuclear testing, could also dramatically shift the balance of nuclear weapons over time by giving Seoul the ability to covertly prepare its own bomb program, experts told USA TODAY.
Ankit Panda, a nuclear strategy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said both moves, while “different in nature,” could significantly destabilize the nuclear situation.
Will the US detonate a nuclear weapon?
In an Oct. 29 post, President Trump falsely claimed that the United States had more nuclear weapons than Russia and declared that the Pentagon would “begin testing nuclear weapons on an equal basis.”
The president did not say what he meant by “nuclear test,” and the White House declined on the record to answer questions from USA TODAY about the announcement. Trump also did not say whether the test could violate the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which the United States has signed but not ratified.
One interpretation of President Trump’s statements is that he intends to order the detonation of nuclear tests, large and small. Such an experiment would likely take place underground in Nevada. Alternatively, the president may have meant that he intended to resume unarmed testing of nuclear delivery platforms such as missiles, although the United States already conducts regular nuclear missile tests. The last time the Air Force tested an unarmed Minuteman III nuclear missile was in May.
Trump, boarding Air Force One after meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, added that his decision was in response to what he called tests by other countries.
According to the International Test Monitoring Group, North Korea is the only country to have conducted a nuclear test explosion since 1998. But for decades, U.S. intelligence agencies have expressed concern that Russia and China continued to secretly test low-yield nuclear weapons even after both countries and the United States confirmed they had ceased testing in 1996.
U.S. officials have not elaborated on why they believe the experiment is taking place, and evidence of the experiment is classified as top secret.
But suspicions have long swirled around Russia’s Novaya Zemlya Islands, a remote region off Russia’s northern coast where more than 100 tests were carried out over several decades during the Cold War.
The State Department revealed that Russia has conducted “supercritical nuclear weapons tests” without reporting them since the 1996 moratorium was renewed. “Concerns remain due to these past activities and the uncertainty and lack of transparency regarding Russia’s activities in Novaya Zemlya,” according to the ministry’s 2025 Arms Control Compliance Report.
Increased activity has also been detected in recent years at the Lop Nur Experiment Station in Xinjiang, an autonomous region in northwestern China. A 2020 State Department report expressed concern that increased activity on the ground could mean China is not complying with the testing ban. No evidence was presented.
There are no “communication channels” between superpowers.
Both Russia and China expressed concern about President Trump’s statement.
Russia recently tested nuclear-powered cruise missiles and nuclear torpedoes, but those tests were unarmed evaluations of delivery platforms rather than nuclear warheads.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on October 30: “President Trump said in his statement that other countries were conducting nuclear weapons tests. Until now, we were not aware that anyone was doing so.” However, Russian President Vladimir Putin has previously said that Russia would resume full-scale nuclear explosion tests if other countries conducted nuclear weapons tests.
“China expects the United States to sincerely comply with its obligations under the (CTBT) and its commitment to a ‘suspension of nuclear testing,'” Chinese Foreign Minister Guo Jiakun told reporters at a press conference on October 30.
Dean, a former diplomat who now works for the arms control nonprofit Nuclear Threat Initiative, said the Trump administration needs to be clear about its intentions. With the last nuclear arms control treaty between the United States and Russia expiring in February, he argued that “this development is even more dangerous, and its ambiguity is even more dangerous when both sides do not have communication channels to properly interpret each other’s signals.”
Regardless of President Trump’s intentions, the United States is unlikely to be able to quickly launch a nuclear warhead. Nuclear weapons experts believe the National Nuclear Security Administration (which is responsible for nuclear testing, not the Pentagon) is not prepared to detonate a nuclear weapon “immediately.” The agency declined to provide comment on the record to USA TODAY.
Nuclear submarine bound for Seoul
The nuclear test announcement was not the only nuclear-related move that caused a stir during President Trump’s trip to Asia.
He accepted South Korean President Lee Jae-myung’s request to help the U.S. ally build nuclear-powered military submarines.
Although such ships do not carry nuclear weapons, “most or all nuclear submarines” are fueled by highly enriched uranium, which is close to weapons-grade purity, according to the World Nuclear Association.
President Trump did not reveal the fuel deal when he announced the submarine deal, but it will have a major impact on whether South Korea’s submarine program can also support bomb-making projects.
However, in his meeting with President Trump, Lee asked that the United States provide South Korea with the ability to refuel its planned submarines, which would likely require the establishment of domestic uranium enrichment capabilities. U.S. diplomats have traditionally opposed allowing South Korea to enrich uranium, citing the risk of nuclear weapons.
A majority of South Koreans support the production of nuclear weapons, and the issue has become a subject of domestic political debate.
Victor Cha, a Georgetown city government professor and top Korea expert at the think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies, told USA TODAY that the move “gives[South Korea]a potential nuclear capability” if South Korea’s uranium enrichment capability is established for the first time.
According to weapons experts, the nuclear incubation period is when a country does not have a nuclear weapons program but maintains the knowledge, technology, and infrastructure to quickly produce a bomb if needed.
Panda, the Carnegie Endowment expert, said South Korea likely sees value in the nuclear latency period as its relationship with the United States becomes increasingly uncertain.
“This is a major development for the alliance and a major change in U.S. policy,” Cha said, adding that he believes the project is “good for (South Korea) and good for the alliance.”
A submarine deal could strengthen the alliance by extending nuclear latency and strengthening South Korea’s naval capabilities against threats from China and North Korea.
However, not all experts believe that building nuclear weapons is a good thing for South Korea. This is because such measures could provoke North Korea or harm the world economy by imposing international sanctions on South Korea and its high-tech industry for violating the Nuclear Weapons Treaty.
Contributed by: Reuters
Davis Winkie’s role covering nuclear threats and national security for USA TODAY is supported by a partnership with the Outrider Foundation and our journalism funding partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.
