The Case for Resuming United States Nuclear Weapons Testing
After more than three decades of adhering to a voluntary testing moratorium since 1992, the United States faces unprecedented challenges to its nuclear deterrent credibility. These include an aging stockpile of weapons designed and certified through testing during the Cold War era, rapidly expanding nuclear arsenals in China and Russia with advanced delivery systems, questions about the long-term reliability of plutonium pits and other aging components, the inability to validate new manufacturing processes without testing, concerns about potential clandestine testing by adversaries, and the erosion of nuclear weapons expertise as the generation that conducted tests retires. This analysis argues that resuming nuclear testing represents a necessary response to maintain strategic stability, ensure the credibility of America's nuclear deterrent, and preserve the technical expertise required to maintain the nation's nuclear stockpile into the future.
I. Introduction: The Changing Nuclear Landscape
The United States conducted its last nuclear weapons test on September 23, 1992, at the Nevada Test Site, bringing to an end a 50-year program that included 1,030 nuclear test explosions.1 The voluntary moratorium was formalized with the opening for signature of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty in 1996, though the United States Senate declined to ratify the treaty in 1999.2 For more than three decades, the United States has relied on the Stockpile Stewardship Program, a science-based approach that employs advanced computer simulations, subcritical experiments, and non-nuclear testing to maintain confidence in the nuclear arsenal without explosive testing.3
However, the strategic environment that existed in the 1990s when these decisions were made has fundamentally transformed. The bipolar nuclear competition of the Cold War has evolved into a complex tripartite dynamic involving the United States, Russia, and an rapidly ascending China. China's nuclear arsenal has grown from approximately 200 warheads in 2020 to over 600 warheads as of 2025, with estimates projecting more than 1,000 warheads by 2030 and potentially 1,500 by 2035.4 This represents an unprecedented rate of nuclear expansion not seen since the height of the Cold War. Meanwhile, Russia continues to modernize its arsenal and has engaged in escalatory nuclear rhetoric, withdrawing its ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty in 2023.5
Against this backdrop, questions have emerged about whether the United States can indefinitely maintain confidence in its nuclear deterrent without testing, particularly as weapons age far beyond their original design lifetimes and as adversaries potentially gain advantages through their own modernization programs. Recent policy discussions, including proposals in Project 2025 and statements from national security officials, have renewed debate about whether resumed testing may be necessary to ensure the credibility of America's nuclear deterrent in an increasingly dangerous world.6
II. Technical and Scientific Arguments for Testing
A. Limitations of the Stockpile Stewardship Program
The Stockpile Stewardship Program was established as an ambitious attempt to maintain the nuclear arsenal through scientific understanding and simulation rather than empirical testing. While the program has achieved notable successes, including the development of the world's most powerful supercomputers and advanced experimental facilities, fundamental questions remain about whether simulation alone can fully replicate the complex physics of nuclear weapons performance.7
Nuclear weapons function through extraordinarily complex processes occurring in microseconds under some of the most extreme conditions known to physics. The primary stage of a modern thermonuclear weapon involves the implosion of a plutonium pit to achieve supercriticality, while simultaneously injecting tritium-deuterium gas for fusion boosting. This fusion reaction then triggers a much larger secondary fission-fusion explosion. Each stage involves materials subjected to temperatures exceeding 100 million degrees and pressures 100 billion times Earth's atmospheric pressure.8 Computer models must accurately simulate the behavior of materials under these extreme conditions, the timing of multiple complex processes, and the interactions between different weapon components.
The validation of these computer models relies fundamentally on data collected from the 1,030 nuclear tests conducted between 1945 and 1992. As time passes and weapons age, new questions arise that fall outside the parameter space validated by historical test data. Scientists must extrapolate beyond known conditions, introducing uncertainty that cannot be fully eliminated without new empirical data. As former Los Alamos National Laboratory director Siegfried Hecker has stated, while some argue that computers can replace all testing needs, "I disagree strongly" because the complexity of nuclear weapons requires empirical validation.9
B. The Plutonium Pit Aging Challenge
One of the most significant technical challenges facing the nuclear stockpile concerns the aging of plutonium pits, the hollow spherical cores of fissile material that serve as the trigger for modern nuclear weapons. The youngest pits in the current U.S. stockpile are now over 30 years old, with most produced during the 1970s and 1980s at the Rocky Flats Plant, which was shut down in 1989 due to environmental violations.10 These components were not designed or intended to last indefinitely.
Plutonium undergoes radioactive decay through alpha-particle emission, whereby plutonium-239 atoms spontaneously emit high-energy helium nuclei and transform into uranium-235. This self-irradiation process accumulates damage to the material's crystal structure over time, potentially affecting density, mechanical strength, and other properties critical to weapon performance.11 While accelerated aging experiments have provided some confidence about pit lifetimes, these studies face inherent limitations. Accelerated aging using plutonium-238 alloys can simulate the cumulative radiation dose, but cannot fully replicate the rate-dependent effects of damage accumulation over decades.
Early assessments suggested pit lifetimes of 45 to 60 years. Subsequent studies extended these estimates to 100 years or potentially 150 years for some pit types.12 However, significant uncertainty remains, particularly for pits beyond 80 years of age. A 2019 JASON study, commissioned after the National Nuclear Security Administration took over JASON's funding from the Department of Defense, noted that "studies on plutonium aging and its impacts on the performance of nuclear-weapon primaries have not been sufficiently prioritized over the past decade" and called for "a focused program of experiments, theory, and simulations" to determine aging timescales.13 More critically, a 2024 Government Accountability Office report found that even with ongoing research, quantifying how plutonium property changes affect weapon performance "under all relevant conditions" remains extremely difficult.14
The fundamental question is whether computer simulations and non-nuclear experiments can provide sufficient confidence in the performance of aging pits, or whether explosive testing of aged pits would be necessary to validate performance as materials approach and exceed their estimated lifetimes. Given that these components serve as the trigger for the entire nuclear explosive sequence, even small uncertainties in pit performance could have cascading effects on weapon yield and reliability.
C. New Pit Production and Manufacturing Process Validation
The United States faces a critical challenge in reestablishing large-scale plutonium pit production capability. Current plans call for producing 80 pits per year by 2030, split between Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.15 However, this ambitious timeline has already encountered significant delays, and fundamental questions remain about whether newly manufactured pits will perform identically to the Rocky Flats pits that were validated through testing.
New pits will be manufactured using updated processes, different equipment, and in some cases, modified designs compared to the Cold War-era pits that were tested. The manufacturing process for plutonium pits involves numerous complex metallurgical steps, including casting molten plutonium, machining to precise tolerances while working in glove boxes due to radioactivity, and heat treatment processes that can take up to 72 hours per pit.16 Small variations in manufacturing processes can potentially affect material properties in ways that might only be detectable through explosive testing.
The question of certification becomes particularly acute for new weapon designs. The W87-1 warhead being developed for the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent program will use newly manufactured pits. While Los Alamos certified its first new plutonium pit for use in a weapon in 2024, this "diamond stamping" certification was based on non-nuclear testing and modeling rather than explosive validation.17 Without nuclear testing, the United States must rely entirely on the assumption that simulations accurately predict the performance of components manufactured through processes that differ from those used for tested weapons.
D. Maintaining Nuclear Weapons Expertise
An often-overlooked technical argument for testing concerns the preservation of nuclear weapons expertise. The generation of scientists and engineers who designed, built, and tested nuclear weapons during the Cold War is retiring or has already retired. Today's nuclear weapons workforce has never witnessed an explosive nuclear test, relying instead on archival data, simulations, and the institutional knowledge passed down from their predecessors.
Nuclear weapons design requires understanding physics, materials science, engineering, and manufacturing at the highest levels of sophistication. The unique empirical knowledge gained from conducting explosive tests—understanding how weapons actually perform rather than how models predict they should perform—cannot be fully captured in documents or simulations. As noted by multiple assessments of the Stockpile Stewardship Program, maintaining a technically competent and motivated workforce requires engaging problems that test the limits of scientific understanding.18
The absence of testing may lead to gradual erosion of capability as critical tacit knowledge is lost with each generation. Furthermore, without the ability to empirically validate theoretical work through testing, attracting and retaining top-tier scientific talent becomes more challenging. Scientists and engineers may find weapons work less intellectually stimulating when restricted to simulation and analysis of decades-old data, rather than pushing the boundaries of knowledge through experimental validation.
E. Limits of Subcritical and Hydrodynamic Testing
While the Stockpile Stewardship Program relies heavily on subcritical experiments and hydrodynamic tests, these approaches have inherent limitations. Subcritical experiments test plutonium behavior using quantities insufficient to achieve a critical chain reaction. These experiments provide valuable data about material properties under explosive compression, but they cannot replicate the full sequence of events in a nuclear detonation, including the crucial transition to supercriticality and the sustained fission chain reaction.19
Similarly, hydrodynamic tests use non-fissile materials or insufficient quantities of fissile material to test the implosion physics and timing sequences of nuclear weapons. While such tests can validate that components fit together correctly and that implosion symmetry meets design requirements, they cannot confirm that the nuclear yield, neutron physics, and thermonuclear burn will perform as predicted under actual detonation conditions.
The gap between subcritical experiments and full-scale nuclear tests represents a fundamental limitation of the current approach. Phenomena that occur only during supercritical conditions—including neutron multiplication, energy deposition rates, and radiation transport through compressed materials—cannot be directly observed without crossing the threshold into nuclear explosive testing.
III. Strategic and Geopolitical Arguments
A. China's Rapid Nuclear Expansion
The most compelling geopolitical argument for resumed testing centers on China's unprecedented nuclear buildup. Between 2023 and 2025, China added approximately 100 warheads per year to its arsenal, the fastest expansion rate of any nuclear power.20 Commercial satellite imagery has revealed that China has constructed or is nearing completion of approximately 350 new intercontinental ballistic missile silos across three desert regions in northern China and three mountainous areas in the east.21 Depending on how China structures its forces, it could potentially field as many ICBMs as either Russia or the United States by the end of the decade.
In September 2025, China publicly displayed its complete nuclear triad—land-based missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and air-delivered weapons—for the first time at a military parade in Beijing, signaling both capability and intent.22 The Pentagon's 2024 China Military Power Report assessed that Beijing seeks to achieve a credible deterrent capable of surviving a first strike and responding globally, representing a significant departure from China's historically minimal deterrent posture.23
Critically, China conducted extensive nuclear testing during its weapons development program, conducting 45 tests between 1964 and 1996. This testing campaign gave Chinese weapons designers empirical validation of their designs across a range of yields and configurations. As China rapidly expands its arsenal, it benefits from this foundation of test-validated designs while the United States constrains itself to an aging, untested stockpile.
The strategic implications are profound. For decades, the United States maintained overwhelming nuclear superiority over China, enabling extended deterrence commitments to allies in the Indo-Pacific region. As China approaches nuclear parity in terms of deployed strategic weapons, the credibility of American security guarantees may erode unless the United States demonstrates both capability and resolve to maintain its deterrent. Resuming nuclear testing would signal American determination to preserve strategic advantage and reassure allies that the United States takes seriously the challenge posed by China's nuclear modernization.
B. Russian Nuclear Modernization and Provocations
Russia maintains the world's largest nuclear arsenal and has actively modernized its strategic forces while simultaneously engaging in nuclear coercion and escalatory rhetoric. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has been accompanied by repeated nuclear threats aimed at deterring Western military support for Kyiv. Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly referenced Russia's nuclear capabilities and lowered the threshold for nuclear use in Russian military doctrine.24
Russia has withdrawn its ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, explicitly citing the need to maintain parity with the United States, which never ratified the treaty.25 While Russia has not conducted nuclear tests since 1990, the withdrawal of CTBT ratification removes legal barriers to resumed testing. Russia has also maintained and modernized its test sites at Novaya Zemlya, potentially enabling rapid resumption of testing if deemed necessary.
Of particular concern, Russia has announced testing of novel nuclear delivery systems, including the Poseidon nuclear-powered underwater torpedo and the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile.26 While these tests may involve delivery systems rather than nuclear explosions, they demonstrate Russia's willingness to push the boundaries of the testing moratorium and develop destabilizing new capabilities. The United States' self-imposed restraint on testing may create an asymmetry where adversaries feel free to advance their capabilities while America constrains its own options.
C. Deterrence Credibility and Adversary Perceptions
Nuclear deterrence depends critically on adversary perceptions of both capability and will. An adversary must believe that the United States possesses a reliable nuclear arsenal and the resolve to use it if vital interests are threatened. Doubts about either element undermine deterrence effectiveness and may embolden adversaries to engage in aggression they would otherwise avoid.
The question naturally arises: if the United States maintains its nuclear arsenal through simulation alone while adversaries have validated their weapons through testing, might those adversaries come to doubt American nuclear capability? If Chinese or Russian military planners believe their weapons have been proven through testing while American weapons rely on 30-year-old simulations and aging components, they may calculate that the correlation of forces favors them in a crisis. Such miscalculation could prove catastrophic.
Resuming nuclear testing would eliminate any doubt about the performance of American nuclear weapons. It would demonstrate to adversaries that the United States maintains not only the theoretical capability but the practical, empirically validated means to hold at risk anything an adversary values. This psychological dimension of deterrence—the certainty in an adversary's mind that American weapons will work as advertised—cannot be achieved through simulation alone.
Furthermore, the willingness to test signals resolve. A nation that constrains its testing may be perceived as lacking the political will to maintain its deterrent, particularly in the face of international criticism. Conversely, resuming testing demonstrates that the United States prioritizes national security over international approval, a message that resonates with potential adversaries who may otherwise doubt American commitment.
D. The Erosion of Arms Control Norms
Proponents of the testing moratorium often argue that American testing would trigger a cascade of testing by other nations, undermining nonproliferation norms. However, this argument assumes a static strategic environment that no longer exists. The arms control architecture built during the Cold War has already largely collapsed. New START, the last remaining treaty limiting strategic nuclear forces, expires in February 2026 with no prospect of renewal or replacement.27 Russia has withdrawn its CTBT ratification. China refuses to engage in bilateral arms control negotiations with the United States and rejects trilateral talks.
The moratorium on nuclear testing increasingly appears to be a self-imposed constraint that limits American options while adversaries modernize their forces through other means. China's construction of hundreds of new missile silos and Russia's development of novel delivery systems demonstrate that both nations continue advancing their nuclear capabilities despite the testing moratorium. The question becomes whether the United States should unilaterally constrain itself when adversaries do not reciprocate restraint in their overall nuclear programs.
Moreover, resumed American testing might actually strengthen the nonproliferation regime by demonstrating the consequences of nuclear expansion. If the United States clearly states that resumed testing responds specifically to Chinese nuclear buildup and Russian nuclear coercion, it places responsibility for escalation where it belongs. This approach could potentially incentivize adversaries to engage in meaningful arms control negotiations to preserve strategic stability.
IV. Verification and Compliance Concerns
A. The CTBT Monitoring System and Its Limitations
The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization has established an International Monitoring System consisting of 321 monitoring stations using seismic, hydroacoustic, infrasound, and radionuclide detection technologies, with approximately 90 percent of facilities operational.28 This system successfully detected all of North Korea's declared nuclear tests and provides unprecedented global monitoring capability. However, significant limitations remain in the system's ability to detect and attribute low-yield tests, particularly if conducted by sophisticated actors employing evasion techniques.
Seismic monitoring, the primary means of detecting underground nuclear tests, faces inherent challenges in distinguishing small nuclear explosions from earthquakes and other seismic events, particularly in geologically active regions. The monitoring system's detection threshold varies by location and conditions, but tests below approximately one kiloton yield present significant detection challenges, especially if conducted in ways to minimize seismic signals.29
Cavity decoupling represents a well-understood evasion technique whereby a nuclear device is detonated in a large underground cavity, significantly reducing seismic signals. The United States successfully tested this technique in 1966, achieving a decoupling factor of approximately 70 for a small yield test conducted in a salt cavity.30 While creating large cavities presents engineering challenges, sophisticated nuclear powers like Russia and China possess the technical means to construct such facilities clandestinely.
Radionuclide monitoring, which detects radioactive particles and gases from nuclear explosions, can be evaded through containment measures. Underground tests conducted at sufficient depth with appropriate geological conditions can prevent the release of detectable radioactive materials. North Korea's first test in 2006 was detected seismically but was not confirmed through radionuclide detection, demonstrating that even relatively unsophisticated actors can achieve some degree of containment.31
B. The Risk of Clandestine Testing by Adversaries
A fundamental asymmetry exists in the consequences of clandestine testing. If the United States forgoes testing based on confidence in stockpile stewardship while an adversary conducts clandestine tests to validate new designs or resolve technical uncertainties, the adversary gains a significant advantage. This advantage compounds over time as the adversary accumulates empirical data while the United States relies increasingly on aging test data and untested assumptions.
Russian and Chinese test site preparation activities provide grounds for concern. Russia has maintained its test infrastructure at Novaya Zemlya and has conducted activities at the site that, while not definitively indicating test preparation, demonstrate maintained capability.32 China's construction of extensive new missile silos and modernization of its nuclear forces raises questions about whether testing might be deemed necessary to validate new warhead designs or delivery systems.
The political and strategic calculus for Russia and China differs significantly from that of the United States. Both nations have conducted far fewer nuclear tests historically—Russia/Soviet Union conducted 715 tests compared to America's 1,030, while China conducted only 45.33 From a technical standpoint, Russia and China would gain more from additional testing than would the United States, which has more comprehensive historical test data. If either nation concluded that clandestine testing offered strategic advantage with acceptable risk of detection, the testing moratorium would become a unilateral constraint on American capability while adversaries advanced theirs.
C. Verification Without On-Site Inspection
The CTBT includes provisions for on-site inspections to resolve compliance concerns, but these inspections can only occur after the treaty enters into force. Given that the treaty has not achieved this status and appears increasingly unlikely to do so, the international community lacks the mechanism to definitively resolve compliance questions. Intelligence information suggesting possible clandestine testing cannot be easily shared due to classification concerns, and allegations without proof may be dismissed as propaganda.
This verification gap creates strategic risk. If the United States suspects but cannot definitively prove that an adversary has conducted clandestine testing, the United States faces a difficult choice: maintain the testing moratorium based on incomplete information, or resume testing based on suspicions that may prove unfounded. Either choice carries significant consequences. Maintaining the moratorium while an adversary tests clandestinely allows a capability gap to develop; resuming testing based on unconfirmed suspicions may appear reckless and damage international relationships.
Resuming declared testing would eliminate this dilemma by removing the constraint entirely. If the United States openly conducts necessary tests to validate stockpile performance, resolve technical uncertainties, and maintain expertise, it need not concern itself with whether adversaries are testing clandestinely. The transparency of declared testing also demonstrates confidence and resolve, attributes that enhance deterrence more effectively than restraint based on unverifiable assumptions about adversary behavior.
V. Infrastructure and Workforce Considerations
A. Test Site Readiness and Preparation Timelines
The Nevada National Security Site, formerly the Nevada Test Site, maintains some level of readiness to conduct nuclear tests, but significant preparation would be required to resume full-scale testing operations. Department of Energy estimates suggest that preparing the site for testing could require two to three years under normal circumstances, potentially shortened to six to ten months under presidential emergency declaration.34 However, these timelines assume resolution of numerous regulatory and environmental compliance issues.
The infrastructure for nuclear testing deteriorated significantly during three decades of disuse. Test shafts, diagnostic equipment, timing systems, and supporting facilities would require refurbishment or replacement. The workforce with hands-on testing experience has retired, necessitating training of new personnel in testing procedures. Environmental regulations and permitting requirements are far more stringent than during the Cold War, potentially extending preparation timelines unless waived under emergency authority.
These readiness considerations argue for maintaining test preparation as a strategic hedge. Even if the United States does not immediately resume testing, ensuring the capability to do so on relatively short notice provides strategic flexibility. The current extended timeline creates vulnerability—if a crisis emerges requiring test data to resolve critical stockpile questions, the delay in conducting tests could prove strategically significant.
B. Preserving Test Infrastructure as Strategic Capability
The ability to conduct nuclear tests represents a sovereign capability that, once lost, may be extremely difficult to reconstitute. The Nevada Test Site encompasses over 1,375 square miles and includes specialized facilities for underground testing, diagnostic measurements, and safety operations developed over decades at enormous cost. Allowing this infrastructure to decay beyond the point of practical restoration would represent a strategic decision to permanently forgo testing as a national security option.
Similarly, the institutional knowledge required to safely and effectively conduct nuclear tests resides in individuals and organizations. As this knowledge base erodes through retirement and organizational change, the practical ability to resume testing diminishes even if infrastructure remains theoretically usable. Training new generations in testing procedures and safety protocols requires either hands-on experience or extremely detailed documentation that captures not just procedures but the judgment and tacit knowledge that comes from experience.
Maintaining test readiness, even in the absence of immediate testing, serves several strategic purposes. It demonstrates to adversaries that the United States retains the option to test if circumstances warrant. It preserves strategic flexibility to respond to unforeseen technical challenges or geopolitical developments. It signals to allies that the United States maintains full-spectrum nuclear capabilities. And it ensures that if testing proves necessary in the future, the United States can act decisively rather than face years-long delays while attempting to reconstitute lost capabilities.
C. The New Cold War and Long-Term Strategic Competition
The strategic competition with China is increasingly characterized as a new Cold War, but with the critical difference that this competition is tripartite, involving Russia as well as China. This competition is likely to persist for decades, outlasting any particular administration or political consensus. In this context, decisions about nuclear weapons infrastructure and testing should consider the long-term trajectory rather than immediate circumstances.
During the first Cold War, the United States maintained robust nuclear testing capability throughout the competition, conducting tests as needed to develop new weapons, validate modifications, and maintain expertise. The current situation inverts this logic—the United States constrains its testing precisely when facing renewed great power competition. This approach may prove unsustainable over a multi-decade competition if adversaries continue advancing their capabilities while the United States ages in place.
Strategic competition encompasses not just military capability but also national will and resolve. The willingness to conduct nuclear tests despite international criticism demonstrates that the United States prioritizes its security requirements over global opinion. This demonstration of resolve resonates both with adversaries, who may otherwise doubt American commitment, and with allies, who depend on American security guarantees. In an era of increasing global disorder and challenges to American primacy, such demonstrations of capability and will take on heightened importance.
VI. Addressing Common Counterarguments
A. Testing Would Trigger Global Nuclear Arms Race
Critics argue that American resumption of testing would trigger a cascade of testing by other nations, undermining nonproliferation and potentially leading to widespread nuclear proliferation. However, this argument overlooks several important considerations. First, a global nuclear arms race is already underway, as evidenced by China's rapid expansion, Russian modernization, and ongoing programs in other nuclear states. The question is not whether an arms race will occur, but whether the United States will participate effectively.
Second, the causal link between American testing and proliferation assumes that non-nuclear states are constrained only by the testing moratorium. In reality, nuclear proliferation is driven by regional security dynamics, technological capabilities, and political will. States that seek nuclear weapons—Iran, for example—pursue them based on perceived security threats, not on whether the United States tests its existing arsenal. Conversely, states that have forgone nuclear weapons despite technical capability—Germany, Japan, South Korea—do so based on security guarantees and political calculations, not on the testing moratorium.
Third, American testing specifically to validate stockpile performance differs fundamentally from testing to develop new weapons types. The United States could resume testing with clear limitations—validating existing designs, resolving aging questions, certifying newly manufactured components—without pursuing novel weapon designs or higher yields. Such a circumscribed testing program would address American security requirements while minimizing international concerns.
B. Stockpile Stewardship Has Succeeded Without Testing
The Stockpile Stewardship Program is often cited as proof that nuclear weapons can be maintained indefinitely without testing. However, this conclusion may be premature. The program is now 32 years old, but the stockpile has not yet been tested by the full range of challenges that will emerge over coming decades. As weapons age further, as manufacturing processes change, and as new technical questions arise, the limitations of simulation-only validation may become apparent.
Moreover, the absence of failures under stockpile stewardship does not prove that weapons would function as designed under actual use conditions. The annual certification process confirms that weapons meet certain criteria based on surveillance, testing of components, and modeling. But without full-up nuclear testing, some margin of uncertainty inevitably remains. Military commanders and political leaders must ultimately trust computer models and expert judgment rather than empirical demonstration.
The success of stockpile stewardship to date reflects the enormous investment in the program—over $4 billion annually—and the foundation of test data from 1,030 previous nuclear tests. As time passes and the stockpile departs further from tested configurations, the fundamental question becomes: at what point does accumulated uncertainty exceed acceptable risk? Different analysts may reach different conclusions, but the existence of uncertainty itself argues for empirical validation through testing.
C. Testing Is Environmentally and Politically Unacceptable
Environmental concerns about nuclear testing reflect legitimate considerations about radioactive contamination, ecological damage, and public health impacts. However, modern underground testing technology allows for contained tests with minimal environmental release. The United States conducted 828 underground tests between 1951 and 1992, with the vast majority fully contained.35 Testing protocols developed over decades minimize environmental impact while still providing necessary data.
Political opposition to testing, both domestically and internationally, is indeed formidable. However, national security requirements must ultimately take precedence over political convenience. Leaders have a responsibility to ensure the credibility of the nuclear deterrent that protects American citizens and allies. If testing proves necessary to meet this responsibility, political opposition must be managed rather than allowed to dictate security policy.
The United States could mitigate political concerns through transparency about testing rationale, strict limitations on test frequency and yield, and rigorous environmental safeguards. By clearly articulating that testing responds to specific technical requirements and adversary actions rather than representing a general expansion of nuclear capabilities, the United States could build domestic and international understanding for necessary tests.
VII. Conclusion: Strategic Necessity in a Dangerous World
After more than three decades of voluntary restraint, the case for resuming United States nuclear weapons testing rests on multiple converging factors: the technical uncertainties inherent in maintaining an aging stockpile through simulation alone; the unprecedented nuclear expansion by China and continued modernization by Russia; concerns about potential clandestine testing by adversaries operating under fewer constraints; the need to validate new manufacturing processes and components; the imperative to preserve nuclear weapons expertise as the generation with testing experience disappears; and the fundamental requirement to maintain deterrence credibility through demonstrated capability rather than theoretical assurance.
The strategic environment that existed when the United States ceased testing in 1992 has vanished. The optimistic expectations of the immediate post-Cold War era—that nuclear weapons would diminish in importance, that arms control would constrain arsenals globally, that the testing moratorium would lead inexorably to a comprehensive test ban—have not materialized. Instead, the United States faces two nuclear peer competitors, the collapse of arms control, and the most dangerous nuclear environment since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
In this context, continued adherence to the testing moratorium increasingly appears as strategic self-restraint rather than calculated policy. The moratorium constrains American options while adversaries advance their capabilities through force expansion, modernization, and maintenance of test readiness. The asymmetry creates risk—the risk that adversaries will come to doubt American nuclear capability as weapons age and remain unvalidated, the risk that technical problems will emerge that cannot be resolved without testing, and the risk that accumulated uncertainties will erode confidence in the deterrent precisely when that confidence matters most.
Resuming nuclear testing would address these risks comprehensively. Testing would provide empirical validation of weapon performance, eliminating uncertainties that simulation cannot fully resolve. It would demonstrate American capability and resolve to adversaries contemplating aggression. It would enable certification of newly manufactured components through proven methods rather than untested assumptions. It would preserve and develop nuclear weapons expertise through practical experience rather than abstract study. And it would maintain strategic flexibility to respond to unforeseen technical challenges or geopolitical developments.
The decision to resume testing need not imply a general expansion of nuclear capabilities or abandonment of nonproliferation goals. A carefully circumscribed testing program focused on stockpile validation, component certification, and expertise maintenance could address American security requirements while minimizing broader strategic disruption. By clearly articulating the defensive rationale for testing and linking it to specific adversary actions, the United States could resume necessary testing while maintaining leadership in global nonproliferation efforts.
The fundamental question is whether the United States will maintain the full spectrum of capabilities necessary to ensure its security in an increasingly dangerous world, or whether it will allow critical capabilities to atrophy based on the hope that adversaries will exercise similar restraint. History suggests that hope is not a strategy, and that strength deters aggression more reliably than self-imposed constraints. After three decades of restraint in the face of growing threats, the time may have come to reconsider whether continued adherence to the testing moratorium serves American security interests—or undermines them.