GREG MELLO, [email protected]
Mello is executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group. He said today: “To clarify, Trump did not request nuclear explosive testing, but rather testing of nuclear weapons on an ‘equal basis’ with Russia and China. Russia has recently tested novel nuclear warhead delivery systems — the ‘Skyfall’ nuclear-powered cruise missile and the ‘Poseidon’ nuclear-powered torpedo. Neither Russia nor China has conducted a nuclear explosive test of warheads in decades. Taking the President at his word, the U.S. is not going to resume ‘nuclear testing’ — i.e. testing involving nuclear explosions — either.
“If the President somehow did mean nuclear explosive testing — and there is no indication of that in his words — the process of doing so would not be simple and could not be completed in a few months. There are in any case no technical reasons to conduct such tests and there is no bureaucratic pressure or hidden program to prepare for them. Technically, they are obsolete.”
Mello added that “the U.S. government has withdrawn from various nuclear weapons treaties, including the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty during the George W. Bush administration and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in Trump’s first administration. It has been in violation of its disarmament obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The Biden administration made U.S. nuclear policy more aggressive in 2022, envisioning ‘first use’ of nuclear weapons in wars like Ukraine. Of course, Trump this summer bombed Iranian facilities in cooperation with Israel while the U.S. government refuses to acknowledge that Israel has a nuclear weapons arsenal.”