Vance Says US Nuclear Arsenal Needs Testing to Ensure Proper Functioning

ERBIL (Kurdistan24) – In the first official White House explanation for a presidential directive that sent shockwaves across the globe, Vice President JD Vance on Thursday stated that a resumption of nuclear weapons testing is an "important part" of national security to ensure the United States' vast arsenal "functions properly."

His remarks came just hours after President Donald Trump, in a sudden and dramatic reversal of a 33-year-old American policy, announced on social media that he had ordered the "Department of War" to "immediately" begin preparations for new nuclear tests, a move that shattered a decades-long global moratorium and revived Cold War-era fears of a new and perilous arms race.

Speaking to reporters at the White House, the Vice President offered a measured, technical justification for the President's bombshell announcement, which critics have warned could unravel a fragile international consensus against nuclear detonations. "It's an important part of American national security to make sure that this nuclear arsenal we have actually functions properly, and that's part of a testing regime," Vance said, as reported by Agence France-Presse (AFP).

When pressed for details on what type of tests had been ordered, he did not elaborate, stating only that the President's statement "speaks for itself." The carefully worded justification, however, does little to quell the intense debate now raging in Washington and in world capitals over the necessity, rationale, and potentially catastrophic consequences of breaking a silence that has been a cornerstone of global nuclear stability for a generation.

A Presidential Order and a Puzzling Rationale

President Trump's unexpected declaration came via a social media post on Thursday, shortly before a high-stakes meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea. "Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis," the President wrote, according to The Wall Street Journal. "That process will begin immediately."

The stated rationale for this momentous decision—that the U.S. must resume testing to keep pace with other nations—was immediately met with confusion and sharp scrutiny from national security experts and journalists.

As The New York Times reported, the premise of the President's order appears to be factually incorrect. The only nation to have conducted a nuclear test in the past quarter-century is North Korea, and its last detonation was in September 2017. Russia has not conducted a nuclear test in 35 years, since the last days of the Soviet Union, and China's last test was 29 years ago.

The New York Times suggested that President Trump may have been confusing explosive nuclear warhead tests with Russia's recent announcements regarding new, exotic delivery systems for its nuclear weapons.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said this week that his country had successfully tested a nuclear-powered cruise missile and a nuclear-powered underwater drone, or torpedo, called Poseidon, both designed to evade American missile defenses. However, these are tests of the vehicles that carry warheads, not of the warheads themselves.

The President also called on the U.S. Department of War and assigned it the task of testing, even though responsibility for the nuclear arsenal and its testing lies with the Department of Energy. He also stated that "the United States has more Nuclear Weapons than any other country," which, according to The New York Times, is incorrect; Russia maintains a larger arsenal, particularly of smaller, tactical battlefield weapons.

In his own remarks, Vice President Vance appeared to subtly distance himself from the President's "equal basis" rationale. He made no reference to the actions of other nations, focusing solely on the technical need to verify the arsenal's reliability. "To be clear," he said, "we know that it does work properly, but you got to keep on top of it over time, and the president just wants to make sure that we do that."

Breaking a Decades-Long Silence

President Trump's order seeks to upend a global norm that has held for more than three decades, a period of quiet but crucial restraint that has been, as noted by Fox News, one of the "quiet triumphs of post-Cold War diplomacy." The United States conducted its final explosive nuclear test on September 23, 1992, under the administration of George H.W. Bush. Since then, it has observed a unilateral moratorium.

This informal halt was formalized in 1996 with the signing of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), a global pact intended to curb the arms race by making it impossible to develop and verify new, advanced warhead designs. While the treaty has never formally entered into force—due to the failure of key states, including the United States, to ratify it—its core prohibition against testing has been observed as a powerful international norm by all declared nuclear powers except North Korea.

This period of restraint marked the end of a terrifying era.

As detailed by The New York Times, the height of the Cold War saw the United States, the Soviet Union, and China regularly detonating new weapons, with the U.S. alone conducting over 1,000 nuclear detonations.

The environmental and human toll of this era was staggering, and the ever-present threat of Armageddon led to the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty, which banned explosions in the atmosphere, outer space, and underwater, pushing tests into underground caverns in desolate locations like the Nevada desert.

An Unnecessary Risk? The Debate Over Stockpile Stewardship

The central question raised by President Trump's order is whether new explosive tests are scientifically necessary.

For decades, the United States has relied on a highly advanced and well-funded Stockpile Stewardship and Management Program to ensure the safety and reliability of its nuclear arsenal without resorting to detonations.

As explained by Fox News and The New York Times, this program uses a sophisticated array of non-nuclear tools, including room-sized supercomputers for complex modeling, the world's most powerful X-ray machine, and a system of lasers the size of a sports stadium.

Directors of the national laboratories responsible for the arsenal have repeatedly testified to Congress that this program is effective and that a return to explosive testing is not required.

Indeed, President Trump's own senior official in charge of nuclear testing, Brandon Williams, was asked directly during his confirmation hearing in April whether the U.S. needed to resume testing.

"I would not advise testing, and I think we should rely on the scientific information," Mr. Williams said, a clear reference to the stockpile stewardship program. He presciently noted, however, that the final decision would be made "above my pay grade."

Despite this scientific consensus, a faction within the national security community has been advocating for a return to testing. Robert C. O'Brien, a former national security adviser to President Trump, argued in a 2024 Foreign Affairs article that Washington "must test new nuclear weapons for reliability and safety in the real world."

The core of his argument, however, appeared to be more political than scientific—a belief that testing is necessary to demonstrate American resolve to rising and aggressive powers. This view is also reflected in the right-wing blueprint for Trump's presidency, Project 2025, which called for the U.S. to "move to immediate test readiness" to give the president "maximum flexibility."

Siegfried S. Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos weapons laboratory where the atomic bomb was created, has long argued that the test ban actually favors the United States. He told The New York Times that the moratorium preserves Washington's huge technological edge, preventing rivals from catching up on advanced nuclear arms designs that were perfected through the United States' vast history of over 1,000 tests.

"When you look at the big picture," Dr. Hecker said, "we have much more to lose by going back to testing than we have to gain."

The Global Fallout: A New Arms Race?

The most immediate and widespread fear is that a resumption of U.S. testing would shatter the fragile global consensus and incite a new, dangerous arms race.

As noted by Fox News, once the U.S. breaks the 33-year silence, "others will follow." Russia, which de-ratified the CTBT in 2023, could quickly justify its own reciprocal tests. China, already in the midst of a rapid expansion of its nuclear arsenal, might accelerate its program.

Nuclear-armed neighbors India and Pakistan could feel emboldened to conduct their own tests, and North Korea would likely seize the opportunity to conduct further detonations under the cover of a global free-for-all.

Experts cited by The New York Times believe that both Russia and China are prepared to conduct nuclear tests at their underground sites relatively quickly. The United States, in contrast, is seen as having made few serious preparations, with its sprawling Nevada test site having fallen into disrepair over the decades.

Critics warn that the strategic cost of resuming tests would be immense, eroding U.S. moral authority in arms control negotiations and handing a major propaganda victory to adversaries. As the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) warns, renewed testing would undermine decades of global norm-building and open the door to new proliferation.

For now, the world watches and waits to see if President Trump's provocative declaration will be translated into action, and whether the quiet that has defined the nuclear age for a generation is about to be broken by the rumble of a new, and far more uncertain, era.