President Donald Trump called on US military leaders to resume testing US nuclear weapons in order to keep pace with other countries such as Russia and China.
“Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis,” he wrote on social media just before meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea.
The US has more nuclear weapons than any other country, Trump said, with Russia second and China a “distant third”. It has not conducted nuclear weapons testing since 1992.
It comes just days after Trump denounced Russia for testing a nuclear-powered missile, which reportedly has an unlimited range.
Trump’s post on Wednesday night acknowledges the “tremendous destructive power” of nuclear weapons, but said he had “no choice” but to update and renovate the US arsenal during his first term in office.
He also said that China’s nuclear programme “will be even within 5 years”.
Trump’s post did not include details of how the tests would occur, but wrote the “process will begin immediately”.
It marks an apparent reversal of a long-standing US policy. The last US nuclear weapons test was in 1992, before former Republican President George HW Bush issued a moratorium as the Cold War ended.
Trump’s post came just before Xi landed in South Korea for the first face-to-face meeting between the two since 2019. The post appeared as he was aboard a helicopter, Marine One, while en route to meet Xi at Gimhae International Airport.
On Air Force One after the two leaders’ meeting, Trump said the nuclear test sites would be determined later, but reiterated it was “appropriate” for the US to match other countries in testing.
Russia announced over the weekend that it had successfully tested two new weapons capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
These included a missile which the Kremlin said could penetrate US defence systems, and an underwater drone called Poseidon, capable of hitting the American west coast and triggering radioactive ocean swells.
However, those tests did not involve the detonation of nuclear weapons.
According to US think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), China has roughly doubled its nuclear arsenal in the past five years and is expected to exceed 1,000 weapons by 2030.
The US’s own nuclear stockpile sits at around 5,225 warheads, while Russia has approximately 5,580, the Arms Control Association reported.
Trump’s statement also comes around 100 days before the expiration of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New Start) in February 2026 – the last remaining nuclear arms treaty between the US and Russia.
The agreement limits each country to 1,550 warheads on deployed missiles capable of crossing continents.
The last time the US tested a nuclear bomb was 23 September 1992. The test took place at an underground facility in the western state of Nevada.
The project, code named Divider, was the 1,054th nuclear weapons test conducted by the US, according to the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which played a central role in helping develop the world’s first atomic bomb.
The Nevada Test Site, 65 miles (105km) north of Las Vegas, is still operated by the US government.
“If deemed necessary, the site could be authorized again for nuclear weapons testing,” according to the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History, which is an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution.
The US first marched into the nuclear era with the Trinity test of the first atomic bomb in July 1945 in the desert at Alamogordo, New Mexico.
It later became the only country in the world to use nuclear weapons in warfare after dropping two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in August of the same year during World War Two.