After 30-year hiatus, Trump orders ‘immediate’ testing of nuclear weapons

President Donald Trump ordered the US military on Thursday to immediately resume testing nuclear weapons after a gap of 33 years, minutes before beginning a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Trump made the surprise announcement while he was aboard his Marine One helicopter flying to meet Xi for a trade-negotiating session in Busan, South Korea.

He said he was instructing the Pentagon to test the US nuclear arsenal on an "equal basis" with other nuclear powers. "Because of other countries testing programmes, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis. That process will begin immediately," Trump posted. "Russia is second, and China is a distant third, but will be even within 5 years."

He appeared to be sending a message to both Xi, who has more than doubled China's nuclear warhead arsenal over the past five years, and to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has tested two new nuclear-powered weapons over recent days. Russia — which tested a new nuclear-powered cruise missile on October 21, held nuclear readiness drills on October 22 and tested a new nuclear-powered autonomous torpedo on October 28 — said it hoped Trump had been properly informed that Moscow had not tested a nuclear weapon itself.

"President Trump mentioned in his statement that other countries are engaged in testing nuclear weapons. Until now, we didn't know that anyone was testing," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. Putin, who commands the world's biggest arsenal of nuclear warheads, has repeatedly said if any country tested a nuclear weapon then Russia would do so, too. No nuclear power - other than North Korea most recently in 2017 - has carried out explosive nuclear testing in over 25 years.