Trump stuns with call to resume nuclear tests — why now, and what it could mean
President Donald Trump’s announcement that the U.S. would revive nuclear weapons testing — which the U.S. has not done since 1992 — left experts, lawmakers and military personnel scratching their...
By Fox News · Fox News
President Donald Trump ’s announcement that the U.S. would revive nuclear weapons testing — which the U.S. has not done since 1992 — left experts, lawmakers and military personnel scratching their heads Thursday. The president announced, just before his high-stakes meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, he is instructing the Pentagon to start testing nuclear weapons on an "equal basis" as Russia and China, and that the process for testing these weapons would begin immediately. "They seem to all be nuclear testing," Trump later told reporters on Air Force One. "We don’t do testing — we halted it years ago. But with others doing testing, it’s appropriate that we do also." It’s unclear exactly what Trump meant, since no country has conducted a known nuclear test since North Korea in 2017. The last known tests for China and Russia date back to the 1990s, when Russia was still the Soviet Union. TRUMP LIFTS VEIL ON US SUBMARINES IN WARNING SHOT TO KREMLIN IN 'CLEVER' REPOSITIONING MOVE The White House did not provide comment to Fox News Digital. And the Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment. However, those dissecting the president's comments say Trump may have been referring to ramping up testing of nuclear-powered weapons systems or conducting covert, low-yield nuclear weapons testing. Andrea Stricker, the deputy director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ nonproliferation and biodefense program, described the announcement as a "power move" from Trump ahead of Xi’s meeting, and said that one option the president may be considering is authorizing low-yield nuclear explosive testing that would go above the zero-yield threshold outlined in the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty from 1996, which bans all nuclear explosions. Although ratification from the U.S. and several other countries is necessary in order for the treaty to take effect, the pact established no nuclear testing as a worldwide norm and the U.S., Russia and China have since maintained a…