Trump says U.S. will immediately 'start testing' nuclear weapons. Here's what to know. [View all]

Earlier DU thread: Trump orders Pentagon to begin testing nuclear weapons 'immediately'

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Source: Yahoo! News

Trump says U.S. will immediately 'start testing' nuclear weapons. Here's what to know.

The president says other countries like Russia and China "seem to all be doing testing" — but no country aside from North Korea has conducted a nuclear weapons test since the 1990s.

Dylan Stableford, Reporter
Updated Thu, October 30, 2025 at 4:58 PM EDT
4 min read

In what would be a major shift in a decades-old American policy against global nuclear proliferation, President Trump says he has directed the Pentagon to “start testing” U.S. nuclear weapons “on an equal basis” with other countries, including China and Russia.

“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 post on Truth Social late Wednesday. “That process will begin immediately.”

It was not immediately clear what type of testing programs Trump was referring to in the announcement, which was made shortly before meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Busan, South Korea.

Nations with nuclear stockpiles, including the U.S., regularly conduct tests of their nuclear weapons delivery systems, but nearly all ceased testing nuclear weapons 30 years ago.

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Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/article/trump-says-us-will-immediately-start-testing-nuclear-weapons-heres-what-to-know-201722155.html