President Donald Trump on Wednesday ordered the Pentagon to begin conducting nuclear weapons tests again after a three-decade moratorium on the practice.
“Because of other countries’ testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “That process will begin immediately.”
Trump posted the statement just before he was set to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea, where the two discussed trade issues.
Nuclear tests in the atmosphere, space, or underwater have been banned since the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty, which permitted continued underground nuclear testing for several decades.
The United States last conducted a nuclear weapons test underground in September 1992.
That year, President George H.W. Bush announced that the United States would undertake a unilateral moratorium on all nuclear weapons testing, including those conducted underground.
Hellbound and Down 