United States President Donald Trump has ordered the Pentagon to resume nuclear weapons testing, saying the United States must match the capabilities of Russia and China.
The announcement came just minutes before Trump opened a high-stakes summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea.
“Because of other countries’ testing programmes, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our nuclear weapons on an equal basis,” Trump wrote on social media, referencing both Russia and China.
Trump claimed the United States possessed the world’s largest nuclear arsenal and praised his administration’s efforts to modernise existing weapons systems.
“Russia is second, and China is a distant third, but will be even within five years,” he said.
The move follows Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement on Wednesday that Moscow had successfully tested a nuclear-capable, nuclear-powered underwater drone known as Poseidon. Putin described the unmanned torpedo as “impossible to intercept” and capable of reaching any continent.
The Kremlin said the test marked the second nuclear-capable weapons trial in less than a week.
The United States last conducted a nuclear test in September 1992, detonating a 20-kiloton device underground at the Nevada Nuclear Security Site.
Then-President George H. W. Bush imposed a moratorium on further testing the following month a policy maintained by successive administrations. Since then, the US has relied on computer simulations and subcritical experiments to maintain its nuclear arsenal.
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) estimates that nine countries currently possess nuclear weapons: the United States, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea.
Of the estimated 12,331 nuclear warheads worldwide, ICAN says Russia holds about 5,580, while the United States has around 5,044.
Trump did not provide details about where or when the new tests would take place, but said the process would begin “immediately.”