This also reminds me of a comic strip in which a nuclear engineer is worried they've made a mistake and their colleague asks "what's the worst that could happen?" They reply "millions of people could survive".

Would be embarrassing, indeed, but declarative tests also come with a host of other consequences, almost all of which are not in the US's favor.

@dtc94133.bsky.social - refurbs and life extensions do involve replacing DT reservoirs and other components but also, subcrits can be instrumented to a degree that wasn't possible pre 1992. I argue that the US can better understand the processes (therefore reliability) today than during testing days

“If they wanted to just make the ground shake, you could probably do that sooner, but there wouldn’t be a purpose to the test beyond political signaling,” the source said. Exactly what I've been saying:

FWIW, VADM Correll (nominee to lead USSTRATCOM) a few days ago to SASC: "Neither China or Russia has conducted a nuclear explosive test, so I’m not reading anything into it or reading anything out. To my knowledge, the last explosive nuclear testing was by North Korea, or DPRK, and that was in 2017"

(2/n) This is likely motivated by a recent Russian test of a new, nuclear-capable cruise missile called Burevestnik. Testing a missile is different than testing a nuclear weapon.

(3/n) Strangely, the directive is aimed at the DoW [formerly DoD] but they aren’t responsible for testing nuclear weapons, just the systems that carry them. The US has done this as recently as last month.

(4/n) No one knows what Trump means by “testing on an equal basis”, but the US already DOES conduct all types of tests that other nuclear states do. Neither Russia nor China have conducted full-scale nuclear tests since 1990 and 1996, respectively. The last US test was in 1992.

(5/n) Both Russia and the United States have abided by a Comprehensive Test Ban since the 1990’s and have not carried out full-scale nuclear tests since then. The US never officially ratified the treaty and Russia withdrew in 2023.

(6/n) If Trump is actually referring to underground testing, its not so simple. The US cannot conduct even a rudimentary test within ~6 months and even that is optimistic. Such a test would not provide useful information about the stockpile.

(7/n) A scientifically useful test would take several years to prepare, instrument, and conduct. Anything shorter than that would be nothing more than dangerous political showmanship and would not allow collection of useful data.