Senior Policy Director John Erath spoke with Defense News about President Trump’s comments to restart nuclear testing.
At the time, said John Erath, the senior policy director for the Washington-based Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, a global movement against nuclear testing was on the rise. The United States joined that effort in part because it did not want other nations causing that kind of ecological damage, he said, but also because the U.S. was far ahead of the rest of the world.
“The U.S. had conducted over 1,000 nuclear tests,” Erath said Monday in an interview with Defense News. “We had all the data necessary to know how nuclear weapons work, to verify that U.S. nuclear weapons would work, and other people didn’t. So by stopping testing when we did, we sort of locked in an advantage in knowledge that persists to this day.”
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The U.S. now is modernizing its nuclear forces by creating a new gravity bomb, the B61-13, and new warheads to go on the upcoming LGM-35A Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile and the Trident II D5 missile.
Part of that work will involve tests of the warheads’ critical subsystems, Erath said.
He said, though, that is it not necessary to go through the entire process and trigger the nuclear reactions that create devastating blasts to know whether the weapon will work.
“What happens after the plutonium goes critical is well known,” Erath said, “So you don’t need to do an explosive mushroom cloud-and-crater kind of nuclear test.
“You can do the smaller-scale subcritical testing, and that has been happening.”
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If the United States shatters the taboo against nuclear tests it helped create, other nations are sure to follow with their own tests, Erath said. Once that happens and they start to gather more detailed information on their own nuclear devices, he said, they will start to catch up to America.
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Meanwhile, Erath said it is possible the nuance of the difference between a nuclear-powered missile test and a nuclear weapon test was lost as word traveled through the White House.
“It’s not the actual nuclear weapon, it’s a delivery system – assuming it works, and that’s a big ‘if,’” Erath said.
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Meanwhile, Erath said it is possible the nuance of the difference between a nuclear-powered missile test and a nuclear weapon test was lost as word traveled through the White House.
“It’s not the actual nuclear weapon, it’s a delivery system – assuming it works, and that’s a big ‘if,’” Erath said.
The United States regularly conducts tests of its own nuclear-capable ICBMs, the Cold War-era Minuteman III, without nuclear warheads.
The latest test occurred early Tuesday morning, when an unarmed Minuteman III launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California and flew about 4,200 miles to a military test site in the Marshall Islands. An array of advanced sensors collected data throughout the missile’s terminal phase to determine if it performed correctly.
However, there is a significant difference between the two nations’ tests, Erath said.
The U.S. tests its ICBMs to maintain an effective nuclear deterrent and test its equipment, he said. Russia’s recent test, he said, was timed to ramp up pressure on the West over the Ukraine war.
“Russia was sending a message that they have nuclear capabilities and they’re not afraid to use them, in order to put more pressure [on allies] to resolve the Ukraine war, which is not going very well for Russia at present, … in such a way that will lock in Russian gains,” Erath said.
If the U.S. government were to proceed with full tests that explode nuclear weapons, Erath said, it would likely happen underground. That would minimize the environmental impact, he said, but not eliminate it entirely, because leaks can happen.
The diplomatic consequences and harm to nonproliferation efforts would be far more severe, Erath said. The United States would likely receive a storm of condemnation from other nations, he said.
With the global moratorium on nuclear weapons testing broken, Erath said, nations such as Russia, China, North Korea, India and Pakistan would likely follow Washington’s example.
“The dominoes would fall,” Erath said. “It would not be advantageous to U.S. foreign policy in any way.”
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Erath said he doubts a resumption of nuclear tests would simultaneously erode the taboo against using them against an enemy in war.
He said, though, that nuclear weapons are a tool of intimidation and that Moscow has repeatedly rattled its nuclear saber in recent years to discourage Western nations from providing more arms or other support to Ukraine. Russia in particular could use resumed nuclear tests to amplify its nuclear threats, he said.
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Carrying out these tests would also be difficult, Erath said, largely because the facilities designed to carry out such tests haven’t been used in more than three decades.
“They would need a lot of work and a lot of money to be made ready to test again,” Erath said. “That’s got to come from somewhere.”
Using money from preexisting nuclear modernization programs, Erath said, could, ironically, diminish U.S. military nuclear forces readiness.
He said it is hard to say how much getting nuclear test sites and equipment ready might cost but that it “would not surprise me if it topped a billion” dollars.
“Nuclear facilities don’t come cheap,” Erath said. “There’s a lot of specialized equipment involved that isn’t made anymore, so you’re going to have to reengineer some of that.” Read more
