nuclear-news

US conducts its Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) test.

ICBMs have been sold to the public as a guarantor of security, when in fact, they are an imminent threat.

Maintaining these weapons is a huge waste of resources.

Influential right wing think tanks like The Heritage Foundation have come out in opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and have directly called for the U.S. to prepare to resume explosive nuclear weapons testing

   November 9, 2025 by beyondnuclearinternational, https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2025/11/09/us-conducts-its-icbm-test/

Although not carrying a nuclear warhead, the test is still provocative, say Defuse Nuclear War and Tri-Valley CAREs

In the early morning hours of November 5th, Vandenberg Space Force Base launched a Minuteman III missile, the current intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) ground-based nuclear warhead delivery system in roughly 400 underground silos across five states that would target US adversaries in a full-scale nuclear war.

This ICBM test, which landed roughly 30 minutes later at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, is one of several that occur at Vandenburg every year — as they have for many decades. According to the Space Force Press Release, today’s test “validates” the  “reliability, operational readiness, and accuracy of the ICBM system.” While these tests are launched without the nuclear warhead, the purpose is to practice nuclear war fighting and these tests are just as provocative to US adversaries as their nuclear-capable missile tests are to us.

This launch has an increased gravitas, as it comes hardly a week after the President used his social media platform to make a confusingly provocative announcement that, “Because of other countries’ testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our nuclear weapons on an equal basis.”

Exactly what was meant by the President’s vague statement has been debated in the days since. The President could not have been referencing other countries conducting explosive nuclear tests, because no nation except North Korea has conducted an explosive nuclear test this century.

The reference to “equal basis” with other “countries testing programs” has been thought to be in reference to nuclear weapon delivery system tests, which have been conducted by both Russia and China. But as today’s launch displays, these delivery system tests are nothing new, and the United States has long tested all of the delivery vehicles in its triad, including today’s ICBM test.

If the US were to resume explosive nuclear testing, Russia and others have already signaled they will follow. This reckless move would break a 30-year taboo that has kept the world safer. If the US resumes testing, it won’t just poison the air: it could destroy decades of progress toward preventing nuclear war.

Resuming explosive nuclear testing at this time would solely be a political decision, and it would be a very bad one. The human and environmental toll would be immense: radiation poisoning that seeps into lungs, water, and soil; children born with preventable cancers; ecosystems rendered unlivable. Testing again would repeat history’s worst mistakes on purpose.

US resumption of explosive nuclear testing would open the door to all of the other nuclear powered states conducting their own tests for both their existing stockpile warhead designs, and those that are in development, potentially opening the door to decades of testing and associated releases of radiation into the environment.

Influential right wing think tanks like The Heritage Foundation have come out in opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and have directly called for the U.S. to prepare to resume explosive nuclear weapons testing at the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS). For example, in its January 2025 report, America Must Prepare to Test Nuclear Weapons, it claims that testing is necessary for the global image of America and would be a display of resolve.

Additionally, Project 2025 calls for the United States to “Reject ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and indicate a willingness to conduct nuclear tests in response to adversary nuclear developments if necessary. This will require that the National Nuclear Security Administration be directed to move to immediate test readiness…”  

Officials from the Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Labs who manage the existing nuclear weapons stockpile have expressed that there’s no military or technical justification for explosive nuclear testing at this time. The billions spent on the Labs’ supercomputer modeling, National Ignition Facility laser testing and multiple other simulation systems allow them to ensure that the stockpile will work as designed in a “use scenario.”

The US conducted 100 atmospheric and 828 underground explosive nuclear tests at NNSS between 1951 and 1992. The agency currently needs 36 months to get “ready” for a full-scale, underground, explosive nuclear test at NNSS.

In response to the President’s sudden announcement, on October 30th Congresswoman Dina Titus (NV-01) introduced the Renewing Efforts to Suspend Testing and Reinforce Arms Control Initiatives Now (RESTRAIN) Act to prohibit the United States from conducting explosive testing of nuclear weapons.

In her press release announcing the RESTRAIN Act, Representative Titus states, “Donald Trump has put his own ego and authoritarian ambitions above the health and safety of Nevadans. His announcement to resume nuclear testing in the United States goes against the arms control and nonproliferation treaties that the U.S. has spearheaded since the end of the Cold War, and will trigger new tests by Russia and China, reigniting an international arms race. It also puts Nevadans back in the crosshairs of toxic radiation and environmental destruction. With just 97 days until the only arms control agreement between the U.S. and Russia expires, now should be the time to negotiate further arms-control agreements, not create mushroom clouds in the Nevada desert.” 

The RESTRAIN Act amends U.S. Code to insert a prohibition of explosive nuclear testing while simultaneously preventing any funding from going toward the Trump Administration’s effort to conduct explosive nuclear tests. 

Emma Claire Foley with the Defuse Nuclear War coalition said of today’s launch, “ICBM tests make war more likely and damage the place they supposedly protect. Scheduling this latest test on Election Day is an attempt to avoid public attention on a weapons system that experts agree makes the U.S. less safe.” She added, “ICBMs are a  threat to the life and health of every single person in the United States and around the world. We ask that the upcoming ICBM test, all future scheduled tests, be canceled, and that the U.S. hold to its decades-long record of not conducting nuclear tests.”

ICBMs have been sold to the public as a guarantor of security, when in fact, they are an imminent threat. In the words of the late Daniel Ellsberg, author of The Doomsday Machine, these weapons make “any conflict enormously more dangerous than it has to be” by increasing “the danger that any armed conflict between major nuclear states can escalate to all-out war.” ICBMs are on hair-trigger alert and, once launched, cannot be recalled, virtually guaranteeing a strike on the country that launches them. As long as ICBMs exist, we live with the constant risk that misinterpreted intelligence, human error, or a single rash decision could end civilization as we know it within an hour.

Maintaining these weapons is a huge waste of resources. The U.S. has committed to spending hundreds of billions of dollars to “modernize” its ICBM force, which in practice means replacing the Minuteman III system that was tested today with an entirely new missile system – the Sentinel ICBM,  and a new nuclear warhead design. 

Thus far, the Sentinel ICBM program is now an astonishing 81% over budget and years behind schedule, not including the expense for its new W-87-1 nuclear warhead development being done at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory or the new plutonium pits that will be built at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Yet the U.S. Secretary of Defense has certified, through a “comprehensive, unbiased review” not shared with the public, that the program will proceed.

Scott Yundt, Executive Director of Livermore-based Tri-Valley CAREs criticized the launch from Vandenburg, saying, “Test launches like today’s damage human communities and ecosystems. The Marshall Islands, already forced to bear the overwhelming environmental costs of U.S. nuclear weapons testing, are still used as a target test area.” 

Yundt went on to say “When tensions among nuclear-armed states are high, each test launch carries an added risk. The U.S. military has acknowledged as much by pausing these launches at high points of tension in the war in Ukraine. The risk of nuclear escalation remains too high to introduce the possibility of misinterpretation of a test into the mix.”

“ICBM tests are damaging and provocative acts masquerading as business as usual. We condemn all wasteful, destructive tests that keep the world at the edge of nuclear destruction,” Yundt concluded.

TriValley CAREs watchdogs the nuclear weapons complex and its Lawrence Livermore Lab, one of two locations that develops all US nuclear bombs and warheads. Defuse Nuclear War is a coalition of more than 200 organizations and organizers dedicated to reducing the risk of nuclear war.

November 11, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Hegseth Vows Wartime Footing For U.S. Weapons Production.

BY DREW FITZGERALD, Wall Street Journal 11/08/25

Pentagon leaders are putting their weapons suppliers in the crosshairs.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Friday that the U.S. military will shake up the way it buys weaponry, equipment and software by making purchases more quickly, and from a broader range of potential suppliers. The plan would streamline Pentagon program offices, develop incentives for new investments and potentially box out suppliers that miss deadlines.

Hegseth said decadelong weapons-development timelines have put the U.S. military at risk of falling behind rivals such as China. He said he would clear testing requirements that can slow purchasing and empower military officials to order commercial products when custom-made technology takes too long.

“We need to save the bureaucracy from itself,” Hegseth said Friday at an address to dozens of defense-industry executives in Washington.

The Trump administration aims to extend Pentagon efforts to bring into the fold more technology companies. The push has exposed ten-sions between the old-guard contractors such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin and a new crop of politically connected tech companies………………………………………………….

“We need to save the bureaucracy from itself,” Hegseth said Friday at an address to dozens of defense-industry executives in Washington.

The Trump administration aims to extend Pentagon efforts to bring into the fold more technology companies. The push has exposed ten-sions between the old-guard contractors such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin and a new crop of politically connected tech companies…………..

November 11, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

US Again Flies Heavy Bombers Near Venezuela’s Coast

The Senate on Thursday voted against a War Powers Resolution that would have prohibited the president from starting a war with Venezuela without congressional authorization.

The flight marked the fourth time since October 15 that the US has sent bombers into the Caribbean

by Dave DeCamp | November 6, 2025, https://news.antiwar.com/2025/11/06/us-again-flies-heavy-bombers-near-venezuelas-coast/

The US has once again flown heavy bombers over the Caribbean and near the coast of Venezuela, according to a report from Newsweek, which cited flight tracking data.

Two US Air Force B-52 Stratofortress aircraft made the provocative flight, marking the fourth time since October 15 that the US has sent bombers near Venezuela’s coast. The first flight also involved B-52s, and the second and third were conducted by B-1B Lancer bombers.

In each case, the US bombers kept their transponders on when flying near Venezuela, meaning they wanted to be seen. It’s been clear that one aspect of the US military activity in the region has been meant as a psychological operation against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, as the Trump administration is hoping he decides to step down or someone in his inner circle turns on him, something that’s unlikely to happen.

The latest bomber flight comes as a US aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald Ford, is en route to the region. The Gerald Ford and its strike group will join eight US warships already deployed in the Caribbean.

According to a recent report from The New York Times, President Trump is considering several options for launching attacks on Venezuela, and he isn’t expected to decide until the Gerald Ford is in position. The report also said that the president was worried about failing or putting US troops at risk, and that he hadn’t made a final decision.

The Senate on Thursday voted against a War Powers Resolution that would have prohibited the president from starting a war with Venezuela without congressional authorization.

The US military has continued its bombing campaign against alleged drug-running boats in Latin America, which so far has involved the destruction of 17 vessels and the killing of 66 people. The Trump administration has not provided any evidence to back up its claims about what the boats are carrying and has admitted it doesn’t know the identities of the people it has been extra-judicially executing.

November 11, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Experts: Full nuclear weapons tests would backfire on US

Defense News, By Stephen Losey, 6 Nov 25,

Resuming full testing of nuclear weapons — as President Donald Trump called for last week — would be unnecessary, costly, undermine nonproliferation efforts, and empower the nation’s adversaries to use their own tests as intimidation, expertstold Defense News.

Trump’s unexpected announcement, which came in the form of an Oct. 29 social media post, surprised many nuclear specialists — and sparked concerns that the UnitedStates may end its 33-year moratorium on nuclear weapons testing.

“Because of other countries testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis,” Trump posted on TruthSocial.

“That process will begin immediately,” he wrote.

When asked for comment about nuclear testing plans, the Pentagon’s public affairs office pointed to an Oct. 31 video of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in Malaysia, in which he said testing nuclear weapons is a responsible way to ensure the country has “the strongest, most capable nuclear arsenal so that we maintain peace through strength.”

“The president was clear: We need to have a credible nuclear deterrent,” Hegseth said, “That is the baseline of our deterrence.

“Having understanding and resuming testing is a pretty responsible — very responsible — way to do that. I think it makes nuclear conflict less likely, if you know what you have and make sure it operates properly,” he said.

Hegseth also said the military would work with the Energy Department on this testing.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on Fox News Nov. 2 that tests focusing on the subsystems of new nuclear weapons are already in the works, but he said the tests would not result in a full nuclear detonation………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

“The U.S. had conducted over 1,000 nuclear tests,” Erath said Monday in an interview with Defense News. “We had all the data necessary to know how nuclear weapons work, to verify that U.S. nuclear weapons would work, and other people didn’t. So by stopping testing when we did, we sort of locked in an advantage in knowledge that persists to this day.”

Since then, U.S. nuclear testing has relied on computer simulations designed to predict how a weapon would respond if triggered.

Wright said on Fox News that the United States’ advanced laboratories and computing power devoted to nuclear weapons provide a major advantage over other nations.

“We can simulate incredibly accurately exactly what will happen in a nuclear explosion,” Wright said. “And we can do that because in the ’60s, ‘70s and ‘80s, we did nuclear test explosions. We had them detailedly instrumented, and we measured exactly what happened. Now we simulate what were the conditions that delivered that, and as we change bomb designs, what will they deliver?”

Hans Kristensen, director of the nuclear information project at the Federation of American Scientists, speaking Monday to Defense News, pointed to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility in California as an example of the kind of state-of-the-art facilities that the U.S. developed for safe nuclear testing purposes……………………………………………………………………………

As the government modernizes and extends the life of aging weapons in its nuclear stockpile, through efforts such as the W80-4 life extension program, it uses experiments at places such as the NIF to determine whether the weapons will still react properly if used.

Those simulation capabilities obviate the need for any testing of existing, upgraded, or new weapons,Kristensen said.

“It’s just a fundamentally different situation for the United States,” he said.

The U.S. now is modernizing its nuclear forces by creating a new gravity bomb, the B61-13, and new warheads to go on the upcoming LGM-35A Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile and the Trident II D5 missile.

Part of that work will involve tests of the warheads’ critical subsystems, Erath said.

He said, though, that is it not necessary to go through the entire process and trigger the nuclear reactions that create devastating blasts to know whether the weapon will work.

“What happens after the plutonium goes critical is well known,” Erath said, “So you don’t need to do an explosive mushroom cloud-and-crater kind of nuclear test.

“You can do the smaller-scale subcritical testing, and that has been happening.”

Rattling a house of dynamite?

If the United States shatters the taboo against nuclear tests it helped create, other nations are sure to follow with their own tests, Erath said. Once that happens and they start to gather more detailed information on their own nuclear devices, he said, they will start to catch up to America…………

In an interview with 60 Minutes that aired Sunday, Trump claimed without evidence that China and Russia have conducted clandestine nuclear weapons tests deep underground……………………………………………………………………………………………………

If the U.S. government were to proceed with full tests that explode nuclear weapons, Erath said, it would likely happen underground. That would minimize the environmental impact, he said, but not eliminate it entirely, because leaks can happen.

The diplomatic consequences and harm to nonproliferation efforts would be far more severe, Erath said. The United States would likely receive a storm of condemnation from other nations, he said.

With the global moratorium on nuclear weapons testing broken, Erath said, nations such as Russia, China, North Korea, India and Pakistan would likely follow Washington’s example…………………………………………………………..

“This kind of confusion and uncertainty undermines U.S. credibility with its allies,” Kristensen said. “They need to know if they can trust U.S. policies. … If the U.S. president now begins to signal that he’s interested in [nuclear testing] in some shape or form … it’s going to add to the pool of uncertainties [allies] have about what kind of partner the United States is now, and will be in the future.”…………………………………………………

Digging a hole deep enough for a nuclear bomb test would take months, Kristensen said — and finding the right digging equipment would be another challenge, since not many organizations have needed to dig such holes in the desert for a long time. Once the nuclear device is in there, it has to be sealed properly with materials such as gravel and concrete to keep radioactive materials from venting.

“They would have to build a whole tower over the hole in which they have this instrument package that would be lowered in there,” Kristensen said. “Those instruments would have to be designed by the nuclear laboratories to be able to do what it is that they want to record. There’s so many levels of this that have to fall into place.” https://www.defensenews.com/global/the-americas/2025/11/05/experts-full-nuclear-weapons-tests-would-backfire-on-us/

About Stephen Losey

Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter for Defense News. He previously covered leadership and personnel issues at Air Force Times, and the Pentagon, special operations and air warfare at Military.com. He has traveled to the Middle East to cover U.S. Air Force operations.

November 10, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment