In his 60 Minutes interview, United States President Donald Trump asserted that Washington would resume nuclear explosive testing, citing alleged tests by Russia and China.

“Testing is because Russia announced that they were gonna be doing a test,” Trump claimed.

Whether rooted in a deep misunderstanding or intended as a political scare tactic, his remarks reflected a fundamental misreading of nuclear strategy, based on statements from officials and experts. Yet, Trump doubled down on US nuclear explosive testing.

“Russia’s testing, and China’s testing them too. You just don’t know about it,” Trump told CBS' Norah O'Donnell when confronted about his misinformed statements on kinetic testing.

Russia, China have not resumed nuclear explosive testing

There is no verified evidence that Russia or China has resumed full-yield, nuclear explosive testing. Russia has recently tested delivery systems and propulsion technologies, including the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile and the Poseidon nuclear-powered underwater drone. China has publicly demonstrated its expanding nuclear triad in a Victory Day parade, showcasing ICBMs (DF-61, DF-5C), SLBMs (JL-3), and air-launched ballistic missiles (JL-1).

Both countries are prioritizing flight tests, system reliability, and the development of novel delivery platforms, rather than conducting nuclear detonations. Moreover, the technical destructive potential of large thermonuclear weapons has long been established, meaning that explosive testing is no longer required to validate raw yield for nations such as Russia, the United States, and China.

Respectively, these countries carried out their most recent nuclear explosive tests in 1990, 1992, and 1996, underscoring that decades of testing, combined with modern simulation and stockpile stewardship, have largely eliminated the operational need for new detonations.

Are Russia, China concealing nuclear tests?

When further pressed by Norah O'Donnell on the issue of Russian and Chinese nuclear testing, Trump said, “You just don’t know about it.”

Explosive nuclear tests are nearly impossible to conceal, as they produce distinct seismic, acoustic, and radioactive signatures detectable by global monitoring networks. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) operates seismic, hydroacoustic, infrasound, and radionuclide stations that can identify and locate even low-yield underground detonations.

Combined with open-source satellite and seismic data, this system makes secret, full-yield tests virtually impossible. The absence of any such signals strongly undermines claims that major powers have resumed nuclear explosive testing.

Instead, modern nuclear testing focuses on delivery systems and warhead reliability, using simulations, subcritical experiments, and surveillance rather than nuclear detonations.

What are subcritical experiments?

Subcritical experiments, for example, use conventional explosives and carefully instrumented assemblies to stress plutonium components below the threshold for a nuclear chain reaction; they yield valuable data on material behavior without producing a nuclear yield.

What are hydrodynamic tests?

Hydrodynamic tests, often described as “non-nuclear”, reproduce the implosion dynamics of a warhead’s conventional high-explosive lenses and surrounding structures, allowing designers to validate mechanical timing, shock propagation, and materials under stress.

How do computers simulate nuclear explosions?

These tests, together with advanced radiography, high-speed diagnostics, and archived test data from the Cold War, feed sophisticated physics codes that now simulate the full detonation phenomenology with very high fidelity or accuracy. Parallel work in stockpile stewardship focuses on the long-term health of warheads. This includes pit surveillance, component life-extension programs, materials aging studies, and limited production of replacement components.

On the delivery side, confidence in the triad is secured through repeated flight tests of ICBMs, SLBMs, and air-launched systems, rigorous telemetry capture during launches, re-entry vehicle testing to validate heat-shield and guidance performance, and electromagnetic and navigational checks in realistic operational environments. Together, these modalities allow nuclear states to certify warhead performance and delivery reliability without returning to underground or atmospheric blasts.

How delivery system tests undermine US nuclear posture

Russia’s nuclear-powered systems and China’s rapid modernization signal a shift toward strategically flexible, survivable, and potentially harder-to-intercept delivery systems, which do in fact constitute a real threat to the US' nuclear posture.

Meanwhile, the US continues to maintain a large nuclear arsenal, but many of its delivery systems are aging. Moreover, modernization programs are plagued by budgetary and scheduling constraints, as is the case with several strategic programs in the West. If Trump wants to maintain the US' credible nuclear threat, then his administration must prioritize the development and timely deployment of improved delivery platforms, modernized warheads, and robust command-and-control systems.

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Is there reason behind US resumption of payload testing?

The accelerated expansion and diversification of Russia and China's publicly revealed nuclear arsenals have prompted intense debate over the response of the US and its allies. Russia is unveiling the aforementioned novel delivery systems, while China is openly displaying a much larger and modernized force, which took decades of concentrated and principled effort.

The Trump administration’s announcement that it would “start testing” nuclear weapons, later clarified as non-explosive nuclear delivery systems tests, added fuel to the controversy.

However, a return to explosive testing could trigger a chain reaction of nuclear testing by US adversaries, making the world less safe.

"There is no good reason for the United States to resume explosive nuclear testing; it would actually make everyone in the US less safe," Tara Drozdenko, director of the global security program at Union of Concerned Scientists, told Reuters.

"The US has so much to lose and so little to gain from resuming testing," she underlined.

Russia's strategic novel systems

Russia has tested or showcased new nuclear delivery platforms: It recently launched the Khabarovsk nuclear submarine, a purpose-built “carrier” for nuclear-armed unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs).

Each Khabarovsk sub is reported to carry up to six Poseidon drones. These drones have nuclear reactors, now tested for the first time, and large warheads. Russian President Vladimir Putin says Poseidon is “unmatched” and impossible to intercept. Western analysts note Poseidon could theoretically devastate coastal targets by triggering a radioactive tsunami.

Russia also announced completion of trials for the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile, which flew about 14,000 km in 15 hours and is said to have effectively unlimited range. A nuclear-powered cruise missile could loiter for hours on unpredictable paths, erasing the geographic buffers of conventional systems and seriously complicating Western defenses. These developments, including inertial torpedo tests and war games, are all outside existing arms-control treaties, raising new strategic and escalation concerns.

We previously discussed in detail the specifications of the Burevestnik and what makes it special.

China's modernized nuclear arsenal

Intelligence estimates put China’s stockpile around 600 warheads by 2025, more than double what it had around 2020, and the Pentagon predicts it could exceed 1,000 by 2030.

In a September 2025 Victory Day parade, China publicly displayed for the first time the full nuclear triad: an H-6N bomber with a new air-launched ballistic missile (ALBM), the JL-1, a modern JL-3 submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), and several new land-based ICBMs.

The parade included three new Chinese ICBMs: the road-mobile DF-61, a silo-based variant of DF-31BJ, and the heavy liquid-fueled DF-5C, all capable of reaching the US mainland. Analysts note that China deliberately displayed only US-range weapons, omitting shorter-range nuclear missiles, like the DF-26 or DF-27, signaling the parade’s message of deterring US interference in the region. 

It is worth noting that the People's Liberation Army (PLA) did test a variant of the DF-26, the DF-26D; the "Guam Killer". However, the DF-26D is a road-mobile Chinese intermediate-range anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) variant, specifically designed to target moving naval vessels like aircraft carriers with a hypersonic warhead and a range capable of reaching US assets on the island of Guam in the eastern Pacific.

Read more: Putin: Russia will develop its nuclear triad to guarantee deterrence

Weakening US and allied posture

The US remains a global nuclear powerhouse, possessing roughly 5,200 warheads along with their corresponding delivery systems.

“We have enough nuclear weapons to blow up the world 150  times,” Trump told CBS' O'Donnell.

Although clearly an exaggeration, it is theoretically true that a few hundred nuclear warheads could devastate every major city in the world. Criticism of Trump’s claim does not question the sheer destructive power of the US nuclear arsenal, but rather highlights the country’s relative lag in modern delivery systems and the rapid expansion of capabilities by both Russia and China, particularly when measured against the nuclear posture of US allies.

Cost growth, schedule slippage

Key replacement programs, the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) to succeed Minuteman III, the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine to replace Ohio-class SSBNs, and the B-21 bomber as the long-range manned leg of the triad, are central to maintaining a credible, survivable posture.

Several of these programs have experienced cost growth or schedule slippage. The estimates project $1.25 trillion over 30 years to rebuild the US nuclear triad.

At the warhead level, the deployment of the W76-2 low-yield SLBM and the B61-12 guided-bomb variants reflects a doctrinal pivot toward more “tailorable” options, but critics argue they lower the threshold for use and complicate escalation control.

Simultaneously, the National Nuclear Security Administration’s stockpile stewardship remains the technical backbone for certifying warhead safety and reliability without detonations, yet some production capacities, for example, expanded plutonium pit production, require urgent scaling to meet projected American needs. Cost estimates to recapitalize the entire triad run into the trillions over several decades, creating difficult trade-offs between procurement tempo, force structure, and allied reassurance

A Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) study bluntly concludes that “the United States is losing the nuclear arms race," given its slow modernization versus China’s rapid build-up. CSIS notes the US' reliance on its Cold War-era weapons, whereas China just unveiled five new delivery systems for an arsenal of 600 warheads.

Read more: US 15 years behind China in nuclear power development: Report

So what will the US be testing?

Energy Secretary Chris Wright said that Washington's plan was to check that delivery systems actually function properly without violating the moratorium on nuclear blasts.

“I think the tests we’re talking about right now are system tests,” Wright said in an interview for Fox News following Trump's remarks. “These are not nuclear explosions. These are what we call non-critical explosions.”

Scientists from the Union of Concerned Scientists said resuming tests would benefit US adversaries more than the US itself, and the Arms Control Association noted it would take years just to prepare a Nevada test site.

This is because US nuclear warheads are already well-characterized through decades of testing and modern stockpile stewardship programs, so a new test adds little operational benefit. Meanwhile, such tests would provide justification or motivation for Russia, China, and potentially other states to restart or accelerate their own nuclear programs, effectively shattering the CTBT.

Resuming nuclear tests will ignite a new arms race

If President Trump’s call to resume full-yield nuclear testing became US policy, it would mark one of the most dangerous escalations in modern nuclear history. Such a move would end decades of restraint, invite retaliatory tests from Russia and China, and risk a global collapse of arms-control norms, undoing stability gained in the post–Cold War era.

Reckless public speculation about detonation damages deterrence by sowing doubt among allies, tempting adversaries, and degrading the very norms that have constrained nuclear competition for decades.

The damage of Trump’s remarks lies in perception, and perception shapes nuclear posture.

Read more: Trump nuclear test threat risks escalating tensions with China: NYT