US Vice President J.D. Vance said on Thursday that the country needs to conduct nuclear tests to ensure its nuclear arsenal “works properly,” without giving details about the type of tests Donald Trump had announced hours earlier.
“It is an important part of American security to ensure that this nuclear arsenal that we have actually works properly, and that is part of a testing regime,” Vance told reporters at the White House when asked about Trump’s social media post announcing that he had ordered nuclear tests.
The president's statement"speaks for itself," Vance added.
This Thursday, Donald Trump unleashed a new international storm with the announcement that the United States will resume nuclear weapons testing.
The US president did not provide any further information on this matter. More than an announcement, it seemed like a warning to his counterparts in China, Xi Jinping, and Russia, Vladimir Putin.
It is not even known whether these tests will be to test weaponry capable of carrying an atomic payload, something the United States already does, or whether they will carry out nuclear weapons explosions, something that only North Korea has done this century.
What Trump said
Trump announced in a social media post that he had instructed the Pentagon to “begin testing nuclear weapons on a level playing field” with Russia and China.
However, it has not been confirmed that any of those countries have recently conducted atomic explosions, and it is the Department of Energy that is responsible for the US nuclear arsenal, not the Department of Defense.
“It seems like everyone is conducting nuclear tests (...) we stopped them many years ago, but since others are doing them, I think it is appropriate that we do so as well,” he later told reporters aboard Air Force One.
The president did not say what kind of nuclear tests he ordered.
The United States conducted the world's first nuclear test in July 1945. Shortly afterward, it dropped two atomic bombs on Japan at the end of World War II.
From then until 1992, Washington conducted more than a thousand atomic bomb tests.
Congress passed a moratorium that year on underground nuclear testing, unless a foreign state conducted one, which has now happened.
Prior to that measure, Washington had already banned nuclear explosions in the atmosphere, outer space and underwater, as part of the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, to which it has been a party since 1963.
The United States signed the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty in 1996, although the Senate has not yet ratified the agreement.
Washington ensures the reliability of its arsenal through the so-called Stockpile Management Program, which includes “scientific activities, from modeling and simulation to nuclear experiments,” according to the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).
“This program allows us to evaluate and certify reservations with extraordinary confidence,” he says.
The US president has the power to authorize explosives testing, and Washington's forces have the capability to resume them between 24 and 36 months after the presidential decision.
“The response time for resuming underground explosive testing depends more on compliance with environmental, health and safety regulations than on the technical requirements of the tests or the need to restore equipment and facilities,” a congressional document states.
Doreen Horschig, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, stated that the NNSA can “have the test center ready within six to ten months to conduct a very basic underground test.”
"The timeframe is much longer if you want to test new warheads and new capabilities," he noted.
