Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), chair of the Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces subcommittee, said she has “faith” the models used at the national labs are good, but it’s “always good to be ready” to test weapons regardless.
“I think we should listen to the scientists,” Fischer said in a panel with the Center for Strategic and International Studies on strategic forces priorities. “You know, I’ve been out to the nuclear labs… whenever the subject comes up, you know, I’ve always been told that the models are good and I put my faith in that. Should we be ready to test? I think it’s always good to be ready for anything, because you don’t know what the future brings.”
In late October, President Donald Trump said on his Truth Social account he ordered the Pentagon to “immediately” begin the process of testing nuclear weapons “on an equal basis” with Russia and China.
It is still unclear what was meant by this, as the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the Department of Energy’s semi-autonomous agency in charge of maintaining and modernizing the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile, would be in charge of nuclear tests instead of the Pentagon. It would take NNSA 24 to 36 months to plan and conduct an underground nuclear explosive test if directed by the president, but six to ten months for a simple test, as part of the agency’s Stockpile Stewardship Program.
Based on October visits to Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories in October, Fischer said that “when I’m out at these labs, there’s really nobody there anymore who knows how these bombs were built.”
The United States stopped testing nuclear weapons aboveground and underwater in 1963 through the Limited Test Ban Treaty, along with the U.K. and the then-Soviet Union. The U.S. has not tested nuclear weapons at full yield since 1992 and has only conducted subcritical, zero-yield experiments in a self-imposed moratorium that roughly mirrors the provisions of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which the country has not ratified.
This means chemical explosives are used to shock nuclear materials like plutonium in a confined environment, but the quantity of nuclear material and the chemical release of the reaction is too small that a nuclear reaction cannot begin the way it would in a critical nuclear test.
While NNSA administrator Brandon Williams said in his confirmation hearing he would “not advise” returning to critical testing, he has told the Exchange Monitor since then that “NNNA will carry out the directions and directives of the president as ordered.”