Visitors look at a scale model of the Tsar Bomba, the most powerful nuclear weapon ever created and tested, at the All-Russian Exhibition Centre in Moscow, 26 October 2023. Photo: EPA / Yuri Kochetkov
US President Donald Trump on Thursday ordered the US military to conduct the country’s first nuclear weapons tests in over 30 years, just days after the Kremlin announced the successful testing of its new nuclear-armed, nuclear-powered Burevestnik intercontinental missile.
Writing on his Truth Social platform shortly before a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Busan, South Korea, Trump said that, “because of other countries’ testing programmes”, he had instructed the Pentagon to resume nuclear weapons testing “on an equal basis” with Russia and China “immediately”.
He falsely claimed that the US had “more nuclear weapons than any other country”, followed by Russia then China in a “distant third”, but that the three powers would be “even within 5 years”.
According to the Washington-based Arms Control Association, Russia possesses some 5,580 nuclear warheads, followed by the US with 5,225 — together accounting for nearly 90% of the world’s nuclear arsenal. China holds some 600, with Beijing having rapidly expanded its stockpile in recent years.
The US last conducted nuclear weapons tests in Nevada in 1992 before then-President George H.W. Bush pronounced a moratorium suspending them indefinitely.
In footage released by the Kremlin on Sunday, the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov told Vladimir Putin that the 9M730 Burevestnik had been tested successfully, flying across some 14,000km for a total of 15 hours during testing on 21 October.
While he did not specify its exact route or provide any other details of the test, he stressed that the long-range missile had not yet been tested to “the limit” and said it could be launched with “guaranteed accuracy against highly protected targets at any distance”.
Putin called the weapon a “unique product that nobody else in the world possesses” and proposed “identifying possible ways to use” it, as well as readying the infrastructure for its deployment. In response, Trump told reporters on Monday that Putin should focus on ending the war in Ukraine instead of testing missiles.
The Russian leader has previously described the Burevestnik, which analysts believe to have an almost unlimited range and which uses unpredictable flight paths, as “invincible”. US experts, however, have dubbed it a “flying Chernobyl” due to its poor prior record during test flights and the risk of nuclear contamination along its flight path.
On Wednesday, Putin announced that Russia had also successfully tested the Poseidon, a nuclear-driven torpedo that has been described as capable of causing “nuclear tsunamis”.
“There is nothing else in the world like this unmanned vehicle in terms of speed and depth of movement, and it is unlikely that there will be in the near future”, Putin said, adding that there were “no ways of intercepting it”.
