Eric S. Edelman & Franklin C. Miller
Despite his well know aversion to using the other “N” word and discussing the issues connected with nuclear deterrence and nuclear sabre rattling by America’s adversaries the President, during his trip to Asia this week, dropped a bit of a bombshell of his own. On October 29, President Trump posted a brief statement on Truth Social about nuclear weapons testing, which contained the following key points:“The United States has more nuclear weapons than any other country”
“In my first term in office” the U.S. “accomplished a complete update and renovation of existing [U.S. nuclear] weapons.
“because of other countries testing programs I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our nuclear weapons on an equal basis”
The process of testing our nuclear weapons “will begin immediately.”
Sadly, whoever provided the President with the background information for each of his statements is manifestly unaware of the easily ascertainable facts, and so the President is being extremely poorly served by his own staff.
First, the Russian Federation has more nuclear weapons than any other nation. Its stockpile of nuclear weapons available to the Russian military is about 5200 while its overall stockpile is about 5600. The numbers for the U.S. are about 3700 and 4400. This information is easily available in public sources like the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute Yearbook or the annual assessments published by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.
Second, during the President’s first term progress was made on the “Strategic Modernization Program” initiated in 2010, but no new platforms (submarine-launched ballistic missiles, bombers or land-based missiles) were deployed between 2017 and 2021; we rely today instead on aging systems which are decades old. Very importantly a small number of modified low yield submarine launched warheads were produced and placed in service, and development work began on other new air force nuclear warheads, but none were deployed.
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