fake imagesPresident Donald Trump has called on US military leaders to resume testing of US nuclear weapons to keep pace with other countries such as Russia and China.
“Due to other countries’ testing programs, I have directed the War Department to begin testing our nuclear weapons on a level playing field,” he wrote on social media just before meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea.
The United States has more nuclear weapons than any other country, Trump said, followed by Russia in second place and China in “a distant third.” It has not tested nuclear weapons since 1992.
It comes just days after Trump denounced Russia for testing a nuclear-powered missile, which supposedly has unlimited range.
Later, on Air Force One after the two leaders met, Trump said the nuclear test sites would be determined later.
“As others are testing, I think it’s appropriate that we do it too,” Trump said on his way back to Washington.
No country except North Korea has conducted a nuclear test explosion this century, according to the Arms Control Association (ACA).
Trump’s announcement did not include details of how testing would be conducted, but he wrote that “the process will begin immediately.”
His post Wednesday night acknowledged the “tremendous destructive power” of nuclear weapons but said he had “no choice” but to upgrade and renew the U.S. arsenal during his first term.
He also said China’s nuclear program “will level off within five years.”
The announcement marks an apparent reversal of longstanding U.S. policy. The last US nuclear weapons test was in 1992, before former Republican President George HW Bush issued a moratorium at the end of the Cold War.
Russia announced over the weekend that it had successfully tested two new weapons capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
These included a missile that the Kremlin said could penetrate American defense systems, and an underwater drone called Poseidon, capable of hitting the American west coast and causing radioactive ocean surges.
But those tests did not involve the detonation of nuclear weapons.
Who has the most nuclear weapons?
Trump has said the United States has more nuclear weapons than any other country.
The exact number of warheads each country possesses is kept secret in each case, but Russia is believed to have a total of about 5,459 warheads, while the United States has about 5,177, according to the Federation of American Scientists (FAS).
The US-based ACA offers slightly higher estimates, saying the US nuclear arsenal amounts to about 5,225 warheads, while Russia has about 5,580.
China is the third nuclear power with about 600 warheads, France has 290, the United Kingdom 225, India 180, Pakistan 170, Israel 90 and North Korea 50, FAS reports.
According to the US think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), China has roughly doubled its nuclear arsenal in the last five years and is expected to exceed 1,000 weapons by 2030.
Trump’s statement on nuclear testing came about 100 days before the expiration of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New Start) in February 2026, the last remaining nuclear weapons treaty between the United States and Russia.
The agreement limits each country to 1,550 warheads on deployed missiles capable of crossing continents.
When and where was the last American test?
The last time the United States tested a nuclear bomb was on September 23, 1992. The test took place at an underground facility in the western state of Nevada.
The project, codenamed Divider, was the 1,054th nuclear weapons test by the United States, 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 (105 kilometers) north of Las Vegas, is still operated by the U.S. government.
“If deemed necessary, the site could be relicensed for nuclear weapons testing,” according to the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History, affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution.
But some experts say it would take the United States at least 36 months to restart underground nuclear testing at the former Nevada test site.
“Trump is misinformed and out of touch,” Daryl G Kimball, executive director of the ACA, wrote in X. “The United States has no technical, military or political justification to resume testing of nuclear explosives for the first time since 1992.”
“Trump will provoke strong public opposition in Nevada, from all US allies, and could trigger a chain reaction of nuclear tests by US adversaries and blow up the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty,” Kimball added.
Trump’s announcement also sparked negative reactions from some opposition Democrats. Rep. Dina Titus of Nevada wrote on X: “I will introduce legislation to end this.”
The United States first entered the nuclear age with the Trinity test of the first atomic bomb in July 1945 in the Alamogordo Desert, New Mexico.
It later became the only country in the world to use nuclear weapons in war after dropping two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of the same year during World War II.
