by Emma Claire Foley and Scott Yundt | Nov 4, 2025 |
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – Tuesday, November 5, 2024
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In the early morning hours of November 5th, Vandenberg Space Force Base launched a Minuteman III missile, the current intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) ground-based nuclear warhead delivery system in roughly 400 underground silos across five states that would target US adversaries in a full-scale nuclear war.
This ICBM test, which landed roughly 30 minutes later at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, is one of several that occur at Vandenburg every year – as they have for many decades. According to the Space Force Press Release, today’s test “validates” the “reliability, operational readiness, and accuracy of the ICBM system.” While these tests are launched without the nuclear warhead, the purpose is to practice nuclear war fighting and these tests are just as provocative to US adversaries as their nuclear-capable missile tests are to us.
This launch has an increased gravitas, as it comes hardly a week after the President used his social media platform to make a confusingly provocative announcement that, “Because of other countries’ testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our nuclear weapons on an equal basis.”
Exactly what was meant by the President’s vague statement has been debated in the days since. The President could not have been referencing other countries conducting explosive nuclear tests, because no nation except North Korea has conducted an explosive nuclear test this century.
The reference to “equal basis” with other “countries testing programs” has been thought to be in reference to nuclear weapon delivery system tests, which have been conducted by both Russia and China. But as today’s launch displays, these delivery system tests are nothing new, and the United States has long tested all of the delivery vehicles in its triad, including today’s ICBM test.
If the US were to resume explosive nuclear testing, Russia and others have already signaled they will follow. This reckless move would break a 30-year taboo that has kept the world safer. If the US resumes testing, it won’t just poison the air: it could destroy decades of progress toward preventing nuclear war.
Resuming explosive nuclear testing at this time would solely be a political decision, and it would be a very bad one. The human and environmental toll would be immense: radiation poisoning that seeps into lungs, water, and soil; children born with preventable cancers; ecosystems rendered unlivable. Testing again would repeat history’s worst mistakes on purpose.
US resumption of explosive nuclear testing would open the door to all of the other nuclear powered states conducting their own tests for both their existing stockpile warhead designs, and those that are in development, potentially opening the door to decades of testing and associated releases of radiation into the environment.
Influential right wing think tanks like The Heritage Foundation have come out in opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and have directly called for the U.S. to prepare to resume explosive nuclear weapons testing at the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS). For example, in its January 2025 report, America Must Prepare to Test Nuclear Weapons, it claims that testing is necessary for the global image of America and would be a display of resolve.
Additionally, Project 2025 calls for the United States to “Reject ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and indicate a willingness to conduct nuclear tests in response to adversary nuclear developments if necessary. This will require that the National Nuclear Security Administration be directed to move to immediate test readiness…”
Officials from the Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Labs who manage the existing nuclear weapons stockpile have expressed that there’s no military or technical justification for explosive nuclear testing at this time. The billions spent on the Labs’ supercomputer modeling, National Ignition Facility laser testing and multiple other simulation systems allow them to ensure that the stockpile will work as designed in a “use scenario.”
The US conducted 100 atmospheric and 828 underground explosive nuclear tests at NNSS between 1951 and 1992. The agency currently needs 36 months to get “ready” for a full-scale, underground, explosive nuclear test at NNSS.
In response to the President’s sudden announcement, on October 30th Congresswoman Dina Titus (NV-01) introduced the Renewing Efforts to Suspend Testing and Reinforce Arms Control Initiatives Now (RESTRAIN) Act to prohibit the United States from conducting explosive testing of nuclear weapons.
In her press release announcing the RESTRAIN Act, Representative Titus states, “Donald Trump has put his own ego and authoritarian ambitions above the health and safety of Nevadans. His announcement to resume nuclear testing in the United States goes against the arms control and nonproliferation treaties that the U.S. has spearheaded since the end of the Cold War, and will trigger new tests by Russia and China, reigniting an international arms race. It also puts Nevadans back in the crosshairs of toxic radiation and environmental destruction. With just 97 days until the only arms control agreement between the U.S. and Russia expires, now should be the time to negotiate further arms-control agreements, not create mushroom clouds in the Nevada desert.”
The RESTRAIN Act amends U.S. Code to insert a prohibition of explosive nuclear testing while simultaneously preventing any funding from going toward the Trump Administration’s effort to conduct explosive nuclear tests.
Emma Claire Foley with the Defuse Nuclear War coalition said of today’s launch, “ICBM tests make war more likely and damage the place they supposedly protect. Scheduling this latest test on Election Day is an attempt to avoid public attention on a weapons system that experts agree makes the U.S. less safe.” She added, “ICBMs are a threat to the life and health of every single person in the United States and around the world. We ask that the upcoming ICBM test, all future scheduled tests, be canceled, and that the U.S. hold to its decades-long record of not conducting nuclear tests.”
ICBMs have been sold to the public as a guarantor of security, when in fact, they are an imminent threat. In the words of the late Daniel Ellsberg, author of The Doomsday Machine, these weapons make “any conflict enormously more dangerous than it has to be” by increasing “the danger that any armed conflict between major nuclear states can escalate to all-out war.” ICBMs are on hair-trigger alert and, once launched, cannot be recalled, virtually guaranteeing a strike on the country that launches them. As long as ICBMs exist, we live with the constant risk that misinterpreted intelligence, human error, or a single rash decision could end civilization as we know it within an hour.
Maintaining these weapons is a huge waste of resources. The U.S. has committed to spending hundreds of billions of dollars to “modernize” its ICBM force, which in practice means replacing the Minuteman III system that was tested today with an entirely new missile system – the Sentinel ICBM, and a new nuclear warhead design.
Thus far, the Sentinel ICBM program is now an astonishing 81% over budget and years behind schedule, not including the expense for its new W-87-1 nuclear warhead development being done at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory or the new plutonium pits that will be built at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Yet the U.S. Secretary of Defense has certified, through a “comprehensive, unbiased review” not shared with the public, that the program will proceed.
Scott Yundt, Executive Director of Livermore-based Tri-Valley CAREs criticized today’s launch from Vandenburg, saying, “Test launches like today’s damage human communities and ecosystems. The Marshall Islands, already forced to bear the overwhelming environmental costs of U.S. nuclear weapons testing, are still used as a target test area.”
Yundt went on to say “When tensions among nuclear-armed states are high, each test launch carries an added risk. The U.S. military has acknowledged as much by pausing these launches at high points of tension in the war in Ukraine. The risk of nuclear escalation remains too high to introduce the possibility of misinterpretation of a test into the mix.”
“ICBM tests are damaging and provocative acts masquerading as business as usual. We condemn all wasteful, destructive tests that keep the world at the edge of nuclear destruction,” Yundt concluded.
Sources:
Emma Claire Foley can be contacted at [email protected]
Scott Yundt can be contacted at [email protected] or at 415-990-2070.
Additional Resources
- Activists attended the launch on November 5, 2024 and captured it on film.
- Click here for more of our writing about the potential impacts of resuming explosive nuclear testing. Click here for more about the New START treaty expiration on February 5, 2026.
[1] See Arms Control Association’s 2019 White Paper, “U.S. Claims of Illegal Russian Nuclear Testing: Myths, Realities, and Next Steps, for more details and analysis.
[2] See this State Dept. Fact Sheet on the Scope of the CTBT: https://2009-2017.state.gov/t/avc/rls/212166.htm and this State Dept. Fact Sheet on P-5 Statements on Scope: https://2009-2017.state.gov/t/avc/rls/173945.htm )
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