U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he has directed the Pentagon to resume nuclear weapons testing at a level comparable to that of China and Russia—just minutes before opening a high-stakes summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The declaration followed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement a day earlier that Moscow had successfully tested a nuclear-capable, nuclear-powered underwater drone, defying U.S. warnings.
“In response to other nations’ testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to begin testing our nuclear weapons on an equal footing,” Trump wrote in a social media post referencing both Russia and China.
He added that the United States possesses more nuclear weapons than any other country and credited his administration with carrying out “a complete update and renovation” of the nation’s nuclear arsenal.
“Russia is second, and China is a distant third but will be even within five years,” Trump stated.
According to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), nine countries currently possess nuclear weapons: the United States, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea. Of the approximately 12,331 nuclear warheads in existence, ICAN estimates that Russia holds about 5,500, while the United States owns roughly 5,044.
Trump provided no further details regarding the nature or timing of the proposed tests but said the process would “begin immediately.”
Putin, meanwhile, revealed that Russia had successfully tested the “Poseidon,” a nuclear-capable underwater drone that he described as impossible to intercept. Speaking from a military hospital treating Russian soldiers wounded in Ukraine, Putin claimed the system can travel faster than conventional submarines, dive to great depths, and reach any continent.
Earlier in the week, Moscow had also conducted a cruise missile test, prompting Trump to criticize Putin for “testing missiles instead of ending the war in Ukraine.”
A planned summit between Trump and Putin in Budapest last week was cancelled.
From 1945—when the United States conducted the first atomic bomb test in New Mexico—until 1992, Washington carried out 1,054 nuclear tests and used nuclear weapons twice, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. The last U.S. nuclear test took place in September 1992 at the Nevada Nuclear Security Site.
That same year, then-President George H.W. Bush imposed a moratorium on nuclear testing, a policy maintained by subsequent administrations, which shifted toward subcritical and computer-simulated experiments instead.
Trump is currently in South Korea for his first in-person meeting with Xi Jinping since beginning his second term, as the leaders of the world’s two largest economies prepare for sensitive discussions on security and trade.
