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Nov. 6 (UPI) — President Donald Trump’s calls to ramp up nuclear weapons testing last week have put nuclear watchdogs and world leaders on alert while experts say the United States has little to gain.

In a post on Truth Social on Oct. 29, Trump said he is ordering the Department of Defense to immediately begin testing nuclear weapons “on an equal basis.” What this means remains unclear, though Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in an appearance on FOX News these would not be full-scale explosive tests.

“These are not nuclear explosions,” Wright said. “These are what we call non-critical explosions.”

The comment by Wright echoes the stance Brandon Williams, under secretary of energy for Nuclear Security in the Department of Energy, shared during his Senate confirmation hearing in May. Williams said testing nuclear weapons above the criticality threshold would not be advisable.

According to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor, the United States possesses more than 5,000 nuclear weapons. It has performed 1,054 explosive nuclear tests, more than any other country.

The type of testing the president is calling for is an important distinction to make, Dylan Spaulding, senior scientist for the Union of Concerned Scientists, told UPI. The delivery systems of nuclear weapons and the components of the weapons are commonly tested.

Subcritical tests are also performed. These are tests that do not yield a sustained nuclear reaction that would cause an explosion.

“He did mention testing on an equal basis,” Spaulding said. “If that’s the case, in fact the United States already does conduct all the kinds of tests of our nuclear delivery systems and even the components of the weapons themselves that other countries do.”

The United States and most of the rest of the world, aside from North Korea, have refrained from full-scale nuclear weapons testing for more than 30 years. In 1993, the United States signed a unilateral moratorium on explosive testing under the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

Breaking from the treaty is likely to open the door to escalation in the form of other countries, including adversaries like China and Russia, openly testing nuclear explosives, Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, told UPI.

“What if those countries decided that maybe this is a cue for them to test?” Sokolski said. “Would that provoke any of the larger states that signed [the treaty] but didn’t ratify to test?”

The only country to break from the agreement in this treaty is North Korea, conducting six nuclear tests concluding in 2017.

Sokolski argues that the United States has the least to gain by breaking the moratorium and setting off a precedent for open nuclear weapons testing. The United States’ research in the field is extensive, beyond that of any other country. Other countries, such as Russia, China, India, Pakistan and North Korea stand to benefit the most from more explosive research while the United States would likely gain little more knowledge.”

“I spend a lot of time talking to weapons designers about this. You don’t test for reliability testing generally,” Sokolski said. “That requires 10 to 20 datapoints. That means 10 to 20 tests of each design. That seems kind of wasteful. You don’t design to prove things you’ve already proven.”

“If you’re doing a design that is totally radical, that’s something different, but we’re not,” he continued. “We’re fiddling with yield-to-weight ratios. There are countries like Israel who have tested once, in 1979, one test. Are you telling me their stockpile is unreliable and doesn’t work? If you want to make weapons you can do it very cheaply and quickly without testing.”

Spaulding agrees that full-scale testing is not necessary, adding that scientists continue to analyze data from the repository of the United States’ nuclear weapons testing history.

“We are still learning from those underground tests,” he said. “Other countries don’t have that advantage right now but we would be essentially giving them permission to catch up by returning to testing.

The argument for more live-testing of nuclear weapons capabilities is that it can insure and assure that the stockpile of weapons is reliable.

The United States has the Stockpile Stewardship Program that already tests the reliability and safety of its nuclear weapons. Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, told UPI the scientific community is “very confident” in the program.

While the United States is one of only nine countries that have not ratified the treaty, it is legally bound as a signatory to not violate the object or purpose of the agreement, Kimball said. He is doubtful that this will deter Trump.

Of the 1,054 explosive nuclear tests performed by the United States, 928 have been conducted at the Nevada Nuclear Site in south-central Nevada about 65 miles outside of Las Vegas. The site is the only candidate for hosting further nuclear testing, according to experts.

The last explosive test was conducted in 1992 before the United States began observing the international moratorium.

Past tests at the site yielded observable health and environmental impacts on residents of the region and beyond.

“Anyone born in ’63 or earlier, they were exposed to some level of strontium 90, which was showing up in the baby teeth of American children in the 50s and 60s,” Kimball said. “It accumulates in the teeth because you drink milk and it gets concentrated in the teeth.”

The United States joined the Soviet Union and United Kingdom in the Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1963, in part because of the baby teeth study. The treaty banned nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere, outer space and underwater.

Subjects of the baby teeth study were children in the St. Louis area, more than 1,600 miles from the Nevada nuclear test site.

With the atmospheric testing ban in place, explosive testing was moved underground in deep boreholes. This was meant to limit nuclear fallout, lessening environmental and health implications.

The vertical testing shafts are reinforced to limit geological impacts but the powerful explosions still generate fractures in the earth and the leakage of radionuclides, a hazardous radioactive material.

People who lived downwind of the Nevada test site, known as downwinders, have experienced higher than average rates of cancer.

“These downwinders, in their second generation, they’re still suffering from some of these adverse health effects,” Kimball said. “They are particularly angry. Trump’s announcement is a slap in the face to them as they see it. They want to see all forms of testing, above and below ground, concluded.”

Restarting full-scale testing would be no small task, Sokolski said. What he refers to as a “quick and dirty” test, one that provides an explosion but little in the way of research, would take months and millions of dollars to prepare.

“To get data, depending on how much data, we could be talking about one to two years and much, much more money, maybe approaching a higher order of magnitude, a billion [dollars],” Sokolski said. “Those stumbling blocks are the ones of interest.”

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE — President Trump declined to say Friday whether he plans to resume underground nuclear detonation tests, as he had seemed to suggest in a social media post this week that raised concerns the U.S. would begin testing nuclear weapons for the first time in three decades.

The president told reporters “You’ll find out very soon,” without elaborating when asked if he means to resume underground nuclear detonation tests.

Trump, who spoke to reporters aboard Air Force One as he headed to Florida for a weekend stay, said, “We’re going to do some testing” and “Other countries do it. If they’re going to do it, we’re going to” but then refused to offer more details.

His comments on nuclear testing have drawn confusion inside and outside the government when the president seemed to suggest in a brief post that the U.S. would resume nuclear warhead tests on an “equal basis” with Russia and China, whose last known tests were in the 1990s. Some of Trump’s comments seemed to refer to testing missiles that would deliver a warhead, rather than the warhead itself. There has been no indication that the U.S. would start detonating warheads.

The U.S. military already regularly tests its missiles that are capable of delivering a nuclear warhead, but it has not detonated the weapons since 1992. The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which the U.S. signed but did not ratify, has been observed since its adoption by all countries possessing nuclear weapons, North Korea being the only exception.

The Pentagon has not responded to questions. The Energy Department, which oversees the U.S. nuclear stockpile, declined to comment Friday.

Trump’s post on nuclear tests came as Russia this week announced it had tested a new atomic-powered and nuclear-capable underwater drone and a new nuclear-powered cruise missile.

Russia responded to Trump’s post by underscoring that it did not test its nuclear weapons and has abided by a global ban on nuclear testing. The Kremlin warned though, that if the U.S. resumes testing its weapons, Russia will as well — an intensification that would restart Cold War-era tensions.

Vice Adm. Richard Correll, Trump’s nominee to lead the military command in charge of the nation’s nuclear arsenal, struggled to interpret the president’s comments when he testified before senators during a Capitol Hill hearing Thursday, telling them, “I’m not reading anything into it or reading anything out of it.”

Price and Ceneta write for the Associated Press. Price reported from Washington.

Tehran rebukes US plans for nuclear tests, citing hypocrisy over peaceful nuclear programme accusations.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has condemned calls by United States President Donald Trump for the Pentagon to resume nuclear weapons testing, calling the move both “regressive” and irresponsible”.

“Having rebranded its ‘Department of Defense’ as the ‘Department of War,’ a nuclear-armed bully is resuming testing of atomic weapons,” Araghchi wrote in a post on X late Thursday.

“The same bully has been demonising Iran’s peaceful nuclear program and threatening further strikes on our safeguarded nuclear facilities, all in blatant violation of international law,” he said.

Trump made the surprise announcement in a Truth Social post on Thursday shortly before meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.

Trump said he had instructed the Pentagon to immediately resume nuclear weapons testing “on an equal basis” with other countries like Russia and China, whose nuclear weapons arsenal will match the US in “five years”, according to Trump.

Ankit Panda, a nuclear security expert and senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Al Jazeera that Trump’s decision was likely a response to recent actions by Russia and China rather than Washington’s ongoing dispute with Iran over its nuclear programme.

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced this week that Moscow had tested its Poseidon nuclear-powered super torpedo, after separately testing new Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missiles earlier in the month, according to the Reuters news agency.

China also recently displayed its nuclear prowess at a military parade in September, which featured new and modified nuclear weapons systems like the Dongfeng-5 nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile.

Having rebranded its “Department of Defense” as the “Department of War”, a nuclear-armed bully is resuming testing of atomic weapons. The same bully has been demonizing Iran’s peaceful nuclear program and threatening further strikes on our safeguarded nuclear facilities, all in… pic.twitter.com/ft4ZGWnFiw

— Seyed Abbas Araghchi (@araghchi) October 30, 2025

Despite these public displays of firepower, neither Russia nor China has carried out a nuclear test – defined as a nuclear explosion above ground, underground, or underwater – in decades, according to the United Nations.

Nuclear testing is banned by the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban-Treaty of 1996. The US, China, and Iran all signed but have not ratified the original treaty, while Russia withdrew its ratification in 2023.

Moscow carried out its last nuclear test in 1990 while still the Soviet Union, and China carried out its last nuclear test in 1996, according to the UN. The last nuclear test by the United Kingdom was in 1991, followed by the US in 1992 and France in 1996. North Korea is the only country that has carried out nuclear tests in the past two decades, with its last test in 2017.

Trevor Findlay, a nuclear security expert and honorary professional fellow at the University of Melbourne, told Al Jazeera that it was unclear what type of testing Trump was referring to in his post.

“My assumption is that he means missile launches of nuclear-capable missiles, as North Korea and Russia have been doing very publicly. These do not carry an actual nuclear warhead [but likely a dummy], nor do they create a nuclear explosion,” he said.

“The US already tests its own missiles periodically, both existing ones and ones in development, often splashing down in the Pacific. It does announce them but tends not to make a big deal of it, like North Korea and Russia,” he said.

Trump, meanwhile, has called for the “total dismantlement” of Iran’s nuclear programme and says he does not want Tehran to obtain a nuclear weapon. In June, the US and Israel also carried out air strikes on Iranian military and nuclear facilities in part to slow its progress.

Tehran has maintained that its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes only, and it has never carried out a nuclear test, according to the Carnegie Endowment’s Panda.

“Iran has never done any nuclear tests. They’ve constantly been saying they are not intending to make a nuclear bomb,” Panda told Al Jazeera. “The only thing that Iran has which might be taken seriously is some highly enriched uranium. That’s it. They have not even tested a nuclear ballistic missile.”

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — President Trump’s comments Thursday suggesting the United States will restart its testing of nuclear weapons upends decades of American policy in regards to the bomb, but come as Washington’s rivals have been expanding and testing their nuclear-capable arsenals.

Nuclear weapons policy, once thought to be a relic of the Cold War, increasingly has come to the fore as Russia has made repeated atomic threats to both the U.S. and Europe during its war on Ukraine. Moscow also acknowledged this week testing a nuclear-powered-and-capable cruise missile called the Burevestnik, code-named Skyfall by NATO, and a nuclear-armed underwater drone.

China is building more ground-based nuclear missile silos. Meanwhile, North Korea just unveiled a new intercontinental ballistic missile it plans to test, part of a nuclear-capable arsenal likely able to reach the continental U.S.

The threat is starting to bleed into popular culture as well, most recently with director Kathryn Bigelow ‘s new film “A House of Dynamite.”

But what does Trump’s announcement mean and how would it affect what’s happening now with nuclear tensions? Here’s what to know.

Trump’s comments came in a post on his Truth Social website just before meeting Chinese leader Xi Jinping. In it, Trump noted other countries testing weapons and wrote: “I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis. That process will begin immediately.”

The president’s post raised immediate questions. America’s nuclear arsenal is maintained by the Energy Department and the National Nuclear Security Administration, a semiautonomous agency within it — not the Defense Department. The Energy Department has overseen testing of nuclear weapons since its creation in 1977. Two other agencies before it — not the Defense Department — conducted tests.

Trump also claimed the U.S. “has more Nuclear Weapons than any other country.” Russia is believed to have 5,580 nuclear warheads, according to the Washington-based Arms Control Association, while the U.S. has 5,225. Those figures include so-called “retired” warheads waiting to be dismantled.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute further breaks the warhead total down, with the U.S. having 1,770 deployed warheads with 1,930 in reserve. Russia has 1,718 deployed warheads and 2,591 in reserve.

The two countries account for nearly 90% of the world’s atomic warheads.

U.S. last carried out a nuclear test in 1992

From the time America conducted its “Trinity” nuclear bomb detonation in 1945 to 1992, the U.S. detonated 1,030 atomic bombs in tests — the most of any country. Those figures do not include the two nuclear weapons America used against Japan in Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II.

The first American tests were atmospheric, but they were then moved underground to limit nuclear fallout. Scientists have come to refer to such tests as “shots.” The last such “shot,” called Divider as part of Operation Julin, took place Sept. 23, 1992, at the Nevada National Security Sites, a sprawling compound some 65 miles from Las Vegas.

America halted its tests for a couple of reasons. The first was the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War. The U.S. also signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty in 1996. There have been tests since the treaty, however — by India, North Korea and Pakistan, the world’s newest nuclear powers. The United Kingdom and France also have nuclear weapons, while Israel long has been suspected of possessing atomic bombs.

But broadly speaking, the U.S. also had decades of data from tests, allowing it to use computer modeling and other techniques to determine whether a weapon would successfully detonate. Every president since Barack Obama has backed plans to modernize America’s nuclear arsenal, whose maintenance and upgrading will cost nearly $1 trillion over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The U.S. relies on the so-called “nuclear triad” — ground-based silos, aircraft-carried bombs and nuclear-tipped missiles in submarines at sea — to deter others from launching their weapons against America.

Restarting testing raises additional questions

If the U.S. restarted nuclear weapons testing, it isn’t immediately clear what the goal would be. Nonproliferation experts have warned any scientific objective likely would be eclipsed by the backlash to a test — and possibly be a starting gun for other major nuclear powers to begin their own widespread testing.

“Restarting the U.S. nuclear testing program could be one of the most consequential policy actions the Trump administration undertakes — a U.S. test could set off an uncontrolled chain of events, with other countries possibly responding with their own nuclear tests, destabilizing global security, and accelerating a new arms race,” experts warned in a February article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

“The goal of conducting a fast-tracked nuclear test can only be political, not scientific. … It would give Russia, China and other nuclear powers free rein to restart their own nuclear testing programs, essentially without political and economic fallout.”

Any future U.S. test likely would take place in Nevada at the testing sites, but a lot of work likely would need to go into the sites to prepare them given it’s been over 30 years since the last test. A series of slides made for a presentation at Los Alamos National Laboratories in 2018 laid out the challenges, noting that in the 1960s the city of Mercury, Nevada — at the testing grounds — had been the second-largest city in Nevada.

On average, 20,000 people had been on site to organize and prepare for the tests. That capacity has waned in the decades since.

“One effects shot would require from two to four years to plan and execute,” the presentation reads. “These were massive undertakings.”

Gambrell writes for the Associated Press.

For the first time since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a NATO member has formally invoked Article 4 of the alliance’s founding treaty after a major airspace breach. Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna tells Talk to Al Jazeera why repeated Russian provocations are more than isolated incidents – they’re a test of NATO’s credibility. As United States President Donald Trump questions the value of collective defence, Tsahkna warns that Europe’s security consensus is fraying and hesitation could invite danger.

The American subsidiary of Belgian gunmaker Fabrique Nationale (FN) has delivered new prototype rifles and machine guns chambered to fire the 6.5x43mm Lightweight Intermediate Caliber Cartridge (LICC) to the U.S. military. LICC is one of several avenues the U.S. military has pursued in the past decade to find new small arms that offer greater range and terminal effectiveness, particularly over existing types firing the 5.56x45mm round. Though a U.S.-led effort, Canada has also been deeply involved in LICC.

FN America put out a press release today saying it had provided an unspecified number of test samples of the LICC-Individual Weapon System (LICC-IWS) and LICC-Assault Machine Gun (LICC-AMG) to the Irregular Warfare Technical Support Directorate (IWTSD). The IWTSD, first established in 1999 as the Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office (CTTSO), resides within the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict. It is charged with identifying and developing new capabilities primarily to aid in irregular warfare operations. In U.S. military parlance, irregular warfare is an umbrella term that encompasses a host of lower-intensity mission sets, including counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism, as well as advising and assisting foreign forces, often performed by special operations units.

The LICC effort traces its roots back to the mid-2010s. The 6.5x43mm cartridge evolved directly from the .264 USA round, which was developed internally by the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit (AMU). FN has been under contract to develop a weapon system to go with the LICC ammunition since 2019. The steel-cased 6.5x43mm rounds are 20 percent lighter than equivalent cartridges with brass cases, and have better accuracy, range, and performance compared to typical 5.56x45mm loadings, according to the company.

The LICC-IWS is a version of FN’s Improved Performance Carbine (IPC). Though it has some broad external resemblances to the AR-15/M16 family, as well as larger AR-10-style guns, the IPC is a proprietary gas-piston operated design that first broke cover in 2023.

FN America has developed three subvariants of the LICC-IWS with 12.5-inch, 14.5-inch, and 18-inch barrels, referred to as the Close Quarters Battle, Carbine, and Designated Marksmanship Rifle types, respectively. The company says the 14.5-inch barrelled version is 35 and a half inches overall (32 and a half inches with its stock collapsed) and weighs 7.75 pounds. This puts it in the same general size and weight class as the 5.56x45mm M4A1 carbine, which continues to be widely issued across the U.S. military and has been something of a control standard for the LICC effort.

“Initial test firing results from the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit and other operators show that the accuracy of the LICC-IWS is consistently two times better than the M4A1,” Jim Williams, Vice President of Military Programs for FN America, said in a statement today. “Additionally, the LICC-IWS handles like the M4A1, yet remains soft shooting when firing the new 6.5×43 lightweight ammunition.”

The LICC-AMG is a 6.5x43mm variant of FN’s Evolys machine gun, which made its public debut in 2021. The belt-fed Evolys is also offered chambered in 5.56x45mm and 7.62x51mm. The LICC version has a 14.5-inch barrel, is nearly 40 inches long overall (36 and a half inches with its stock collapsed), and weighs nearly 14 pounds. FN America says it has tested the LICC-AMG against its Mk 48, Mk 46, and M249 Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) machine guns. The Mk 48 is a 7.62x51mm derivative of the 5.56x45mm M249. The Mk 46 is a special-purpose subvariant of the M249. All three types are in service with various elements of the U.S. military.

“In prototype testing, the AMG was more accurate than the FN MK 48 in full auto mode,” according to FN America’s release today. “Overall, the AMG demonstrated improved performance in lethality, accuracy, durability, balance, and handling over the FN M249 and FN MK 46/MK 48 machine guns.”

“FN’s ultimate goal is to advance from development into production and field a final solution that provides operators a system that is easier to operate, more accurate and more effective than anything available today,” Mark Cherpes, President and CEO for FN America, also said in a statement. “After this test and evaluation phase, our plan is to take user feedback, fine-tune the systems, and move into low-rate initial production.”

“Multiple users will test the operational samples, providing critical feedback to aid FN and IWTSD in the final development of the systems,” today’s press release adds.

All this being said, what the exact plan is going forward for the LICC effort, and who might be in line to field the LICC-IWS and/or the LICC-AMG on any level, is not entirely clear. Key to the genesis of the preceding .264 USA cartridge were lessons learned by U.S. forces from combat in Afghanistan during the Global War on Terror era, where being outranged was a common complaint.

“Tactical operators require an integrated, user-tailorable, lightweight shoulder-fired individual weapon and lightweight intermediate caliber cartridge (LICC) that can overmatch the current maximum effective range and terminal effects of peer, near peer, and future threat individual weapons and ammunition, while also defeating current and emerging threat individual protective equipment out to 800 meters,” what was then CCTSO had said in a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) contracting notice back in 2018.

Since then, the U.S. Army has selected a new standard service rifle and replacement for the M249, the M7 and M250, both from Sig Sauer and chambered to fire a 6.8x51mm round. The Next Generation Squad Weapons program that birthed those weapons was driven heavily by the same concerns about range as LICC, as well as improvements in adversary body armor.

Army special operations units were involved in developmental testing of the M7 and M250, though it remains to be seen how widespread the use of those guns within the broader special operations community might be in the end. The M7 rifle has been the subject of some controversy recently, including criticism about its weight, bulk, and increased recoil compared to the M4A1, as you can read more about here.

In recent years, the U.S. special operations community has also increasingly embraced the 6.5mm Creedmoor round, again because of the increased range, accuracy, and terminal performance it offers over 5.56x45mm, as well as 7.62x51mm. U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) has ordered examples of at least two new rifles in this caliber in the past two years, and has also been evaluating belt-fed machine guns chambered to fire this round.

This all prompts a question of whether the IWTSD is now continuing to pursue LICC with more of an eye toward requirements from foreign allies and partners. As mentioned, Canada is known to be heavily involved in the effort. The 2018 BAA notably used Colt Canada’s C8 Special Forces Weapon (SFW), an AR-15/M16 pattern carbine distinct from the U.S. standard M4A1, as the comparison point for many of the stated LICC requirements. At the time of writing, the LICC-IWS and LICC-AMG pages on FN America’s website notably show the IWTSD logo and the crest of Canadian Special Operations Forces Command (CANSOFCOM).

“With an eye to the future, CANSOFCOM is pursuing a NATO Standardization Agreement (STANAG) for 6.5 x 43 mm in partnership with at least one additional NATO member,” Soldier Systems Daily reported earlier this year, citing unnamed sources. “At this point, the other party has not been disclosed. However, I know it is not the US, which has been working on the 6.8 x 51mm common case cartridge as their path forward.”

Canada has historically been very tight-lipped about its special operations community.

Whatever the case, FN America is clearly continuing to work with the IWTSD to advance the LICC effort, with series production of guns chambered in that round now said to be finally on the horizon.

Contact the author: [email protected]

The nuclear danger today is greater than at any time since the Cold War. The world faces the prospect of a renewed arms race, this time unconstrained by the agreements that for decades kept catastrophe at bay. It is estimated that there are now 12,241 nuclear warheads worldwide. Arms control is unravelling before our eyes: Inspections under the New START treaty, the last remaining arms control agreement between the United States and Russia, remain suspended, and with its expiration in February 2026, there is no successor in sight. The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty is gone, the Treaty on Open Skies has been abandoned, and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty has still not entered into force. At the same time, the world’s geopolitical landscape is more volatile than ever.

Deep down, everyone knows nuclear weapons are a danger. We know their destructive power: Instant annihilation, radiation sickness, cancers, poisoned land, and generations of suffering. Yet the international community increasingly accepts the idea that nuclear weapons make countries safe. It is true that, at the level of geopolitics, they can provide a shield of deterrence. But on a global scale, they are a sword of Damocles hanging over all of humanity. The longer we pretend they guarantee security, the greater the danger that one day deterrence will fail. This danger is becoming even more disturbing with the growing reliance on artificial intelligence in military technologies.

I know this danger all too well, not in theory, but in my body and in my country’s history. I was born without arms, a legacy of nuclear testing carried out by the Soviet Union in my homeland of Kazakhstan. From 1949 to 1989, more than 450 nuclear tests were conducted at the Semipalatinsk test site. More than a million people were directly exposed to radiation, and the consequences are still felt today in the third and fourth generations: Cancers, birth defects, environmental destruction, and intergenerational trauma. My own life is a testimony to the human price paid for so-called “national security”. I became an artist, painting with my mouth and feet, and an activist so my country’s tragedy will not be repeated anywhere else.

What Kazakhstan went through is the reason why, since independence, my country has been a leading proponent of nuclear disarmament. We inherited the world’s fourth-largest nuclear arsenal and chose to give it up voluntarily. We shut down the Semipalatinsk test site permanently. We established the International Low-Enriched Uranium Bank in cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, creating a global backstop against nuclear fuel crises. And today, Kazakhstan is preparing to build its first nuclear power plant. This is an important distinction: Our country is not against nuclear energy, which can be harnessed peacefully to meet the growing demand for electricity and reduce carbon emissions. But nuclear weapons are a different matter entirely. They do not light homes; they only destroy them. That is why it was Kazakhstan’s initiative at the United Nations that led to the proclamation of August 29, the date on which the Semipalatinsk test site was officially closed, as the International Day against Nuclear Tests.

Kazakhstan has done its part. But this fight is bigger than us. The world needs much wider support if we are to reduce the risk posed by nuclear weapons. I acknowledge that the dream of a world free of nuclear weapons may feel distant today. But there are concrete steps the international community can take right now to reduce the danger, if only the will can be found.

First, we must address the madness of keeping thousands of warheads on hair-trigger alert. About 2,100 nuclear weapons remain on short-notice alert, with leaders given only minutes to decide whether to unleash them. In such a compressed timeframe, the risk of false alarms, technical glitches, or even AI-driven misjudgments grows intolerably high. De-alerting these weapons is the most obvious near-term risk-reduction step. Human survival should not rest on a rushed decision made in mere moments.

Second, nuclear-armed states must publicly reaffirm their moratorium on nuclear testing, regardless of treaty politics. If they cannot yet ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, they should at least pledge never to test again. That is the bare minimum owed to the victims of past testing, from Semey to the Pacific and beyond.

Third, we must reaffirm the humanitarian principle that nuclear weapons are inhumane by their very nature. That is the moral heart of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Even if governments cannot yet sign or ratify it, they can embrace its spirit, recognising that no state, no people, can ever respond adequately to the detonation of a nuclear device in a populated area.

Fourth, the world must prevent new frontiers of nuclear danger. We must reaffirm the ban on nuclear weapons in orbit, ensuring that outer space remains free of these doomsday devices. And all states should commit that decisions on nuclear use will never be delegated to artificial intelligence.

Finally, we must fight the greatest danger of all: Forgetting. Each August 29, we should not only mark the International Day against Nuclear Tests but also commit to education and remembrance. Every schoolchild should know what happened at Semey, at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, at Bikini Atoll. Only when the world remembers our suffering will it choose never to repeat it.

The vision of a world free of nuclear weapons is not naive, and it is not impossible. Kazakhstan showed what is possible when it closed the Semipalatinsk test site and renounced its nuclear arsenal. If a nation that endured hundreds of nuclear tests could choose a nuclear-weapon-free path, others can too. The question is whether humanity has the courage to do it.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

The U.S. Air Force is hoping to finally kick off flight testing of the new AN/APQ-188 radar for the B-52 shortly. The B-52 Radar Modernization Program (RMP), a key element of a larger plan to deeply upgrade the bombers, has been beset by delays and cost overruns, which led to a review of its main requirements.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Andrew Gebara, Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategic Deterrence and Nuclear Integration, gave an update on the B-52 radar upgrade effort during a virtual talk yesterday hosted by the Air & Space Forces Association’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. Raytheon is the prime contractor for the AN/APQ-188, an active electronically scanned array (AESA) type also known as the Bomber Modernized Radar System. The Air Force plans to replace the Cold War-era mechanically scanned AN/APQ-166 radars in each of the 76 B-52Hs in service now with the AN/APQ-188. Once they receive the new radars, as well as all-new engines and a host of other upgrades that you can learn more about here, the bombers will be redesignated as B-52Js, and are expected to continue flying through 2050.

The AN/APQ-188 is primarily based on the proven AN/APG-79 radar, versions of which are found on F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and EA-18G Growler jets in service with the U.S. Navy and others, as well as the upgraded legacy F/A-18 Hornets for the U.S. Marine Corps. It also incorporates technology from the AN/APG-82 found on Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles and F-15EX Eagle IIs.

“I believe that we are very close to getting that first radar to Edwards Air Force Base [in California] to begin flight test,” Gebara said. “I don’t have a specific date for you today, but I believe that is turning the corner, and I’m very eager, as a former B-52 pilot, very eager to see that get underway.”

Gebara’s comment here about “turning the corner” reflects the substantial schedule slips and cost growth that the B-52 radar upgrade program has experienced. Raytheon announced nearly two years ago that it had delivered the first AN/APQ-188 radar to the Air Force. Flight testing was supposed to begin in Fiscal Year 2024, but was then delayed to Fiscal Year 2026, which begins on October 1 of this year. This, in turn, has pushed back the expected timeline for reaching initial operational capability from Fiscal Year 2027 to the Fiscal Year 2028-2030 timeframe.

“Program officials stated that challenges related to environmental qualification, parts procurement, and software contributed to these delays,” according to a June report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a Congressional watchdog.

In January, the Pentagon’s Office of the Director of Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) had also released its most recent annual report on the B-52 radar upgrade program, covering work conducted during the 2024 Fiscal Year, which highlighted challenges with physically integrating the AN/APQ-188 into the bomber’s nose.

The delays have come along with cost growth. In May, the Air Force publicly disclosed that the price tag on the B-52 RMP had risen to the point of triggering a formal breach of the Nunn-McCurdy Amendment, a law designed to curtail runaway defense spending. This prompted a review of the program’s requirements and cost estimates.

“Part of what we did to control cost is to work at what are the main things that we need on this radar? As you may recall, we’re buying a radar that is largely a F-18 Hornet radar with some small modifications. We did that intentionally because that is what was on the market at the time,” Lt. Gen. Gebara explained yesterday. “It would actually cost us more if we asked [a contractor] to design the new radar.”

“Having said that, it doesn’t mean that we need everything on that radar that the Hornet had on it,” he continued. “We have a certain number of minimum things that we need to do to be able to do our B-52 mission. And so part of the cost saving [review] was looking at what are those things, to make sure that we’re prioritizing precious dollars on things that we need.”

Gebara added that the design of the AN/APQ-188 “does give us opportunities for growth in the future, if it comes to that.”

In March, the Air Force had put out a contracting notice seeking new information about radar options for the B-52, but the service insisted at that time that it was not abandoning the AN/APQ-188. Gebara was asked about this yesterday and said he was unaware of any consideration of an alternative radar.

How the aforementioned review of the B-52 RMP’s requirements might impact the full scale and scope of capabilities that the new AN/APQ-188 radars bring to the bombers, at least initially, remains to be seen. As TWZ has previously written:

“In general, AESA radars offer greater range, fidelity, and resistance to countermeasures, as well as the ability to provide better overall general situational awareness, compared to mechanically scanned types. Increasingly advanced AESAs bring additional capabilities, including electronic warfare and communications support.”

“For the B-52, any new multi-mode AESA will improve the bomber’s target acquisition and identification capabilities, including when used together with targeting pods available for the bombers now. New radars for the bombers will also be helpful when it comes to guiding networked weapons over long distances to their targets and could provide a secondary ground moving target indicator (GMTI) and synthetic aperture radar surveillance capabilities. The radar upgrade could help defend B-52s from air-to-air threats, including through improved detection of incoming hostile aircraft.”

The radar upgrade effort is not the only part of the larger B-52J modernization plan to be suffering from delays and cost increases. The Commercial Engine Replacement Program (CERP), which is working to replace the eight out-of-production TF33 turbofans that power each B-52H with an equal number of Rolls-Royce F130s, has also seen its schedule slip and price point grow. As it stands now, B-52s are not expected to begin flying operational missions with their new engines until 2033, three years later than expected and 12 years after the initial CERP contract was signed. The entire B-52H fleet may not be reengined until 2036.

The expected start of flight testing of the AN/APQ-188 soon does look to be an important step in the right direction for the B-52 radar upgrade effort after years of setbacks.

Contact the author: [email protected]

SAINSBURY’S is the latest supermarket to test a major change to shelf labels in stores – but it will leave shoppers divided.

One of the UK’s biggest supermarkets is trialling electronic shelf labels in a small number of branches.

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The retailer installed the tech at three of its larger shops late last year and has been trying it out across different sections including alcohol, health and general merchandise.

Sainsbury’s has partnered with Harrison Retail to build the shelf fixings featuring the labels.

A branch in Witney, Oxfordshire, is understood to be one of the three locations where the tech is being trialled.

A spokesperson for Sainsbury’s said: “We are trialling electronic shelf-edge labels in a small number of our stores.”

Sainsbury’s shoppers are bound to be left divided over the new electronic tags though.

Fears have been raised digital labels could lead to “surge pricing”, which sees prices hiked when products are more in demand.

The labels can make it harder for shoppers to spot cut-price items too, as they’re not as visible as the paper yellow, orange or red stickers.

Sainsbury’s joins a host of other supermarkets trialling electronic shelf labels in stores.

Co-op is replacing paper product tags with electronic labels throughout its whole estate over the coming months.

The retailer said last month it had already made the change in 340 branches but would roll out the tags more widely.

It said 1,500 stores will have the labels by the end of this year and rolled out across all its nearly 2,400 shops by the end of 2026.

Lidl also said it would roll out the digital labels across all its stores before the end of 2024.

This came after a successful trial at 35 branches.

Asda is testing the digital labels at a Manchester shop.

OTHER SAINSBURY’S NEWS

Sainsbury’s exclusively revealed to The Sun last month it had closed all remaining patisserie, hot food and pizza counters.

It is not clear when the pizza counters shut while is understood the patisserie and hot food counters closed in April.

The closures come as part of a wide-ranging update of Sainsbury’s’ store estate which also saw 61 in-store cafes shut on April 11.

The cafe spaces are being replaced with restaurants run by franchises such as Starbucks and Gourmet Burger Kitchen.

The supermarket said its hybrid cafe and food halls were becoming popular among shoppers.

Sainsbury’s first announced the store overhaul in January, as it revealed 3,000 head office staff would also lose their jobs in a senior team shake-up.

At the time, chief executive Simon Roberts said the changes would “ensure we continue to drive forward our momentum”.

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JAKE PAUL has a fight with KSI on his Christmas list after sending his bitter rival an offer to fight on December 24.

The bitter YouTube enemies are yet to settle their score in the ring – despite recent attempts to strike a deal behind the scenes.

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Nakisa Bidarian – co-founder of Most Valuable Promoters alongside Paul – revealed an offer to fight on Christmas Eve was sent to KSI.

Bidarian said KSI and Wasserman – who promote Misfits Boxing bouts – have had the contract for 15 days.

A bout over ten rounds, at 192.5lb, in an 18x18ft ring with VADA testing to be promoted by MVP and Wasserman was tabled.

He added that the offer included a 50/50 deal PPV share other but the UK which is 60/40 in KSI’s favour and 60/40 to Paul in the US.

A fan probed Bidarian on why the fight would be staged on Christmas Eve.

He responded: “What are you watching Christmas Eve? Nothing. Jake and KSI will have the entire world’s attention.”

Mams Taylor – KSI’s manager and co-founder of Misfits which homes to celebrity-style crossover bouts – hit back.

Taylor said: “Hey man, we sent you an offer too and you insisted we redline yours.

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“Yours is one sided. Ours is fair and clearly a real attempt to make the fight actually happen.”

Taylor said they countered with a fight in the US, with a coin toss to decide who walks out second.

It would include full drug testing, at 190lb over eight rounds in a 20x 20ft ring, co-promoted down the middle with both to mutually approve all costs.

Taylor added: “Your contract had MVP as lead promoter in charge of everything and you put Wasserman boxing USA as side promoter.

“(FYI Wasserman boxing USA does not exist). You purposely omitted Misfits as an ego based mind game tactic.

“C’mon man. Let’s give the people what they want and not let ego’s get in the way.

We have a duty to our clients and respect due to the fans that made them!!”

KSI, 31, is yet to fought since losing a controversial decision to Tommy Fury, 26, in October 2023.

Jake Paul vs KSI: The terms

Jake Paul’s terms

• 10 rounds
• 192.5lb
• 18x18ft ring
• Full VADA testing
• December 24th
• MVP in association with Wasserman

KSI’s terms

• Fight in USA
• Full VADA testing
• 190lb
• 8 rounds
• 20x20ft ring
• Co-promoted down the middle
• Both promotions to mutually approve all costs and undercard fights etc

He was due to return last August but pulled out with a hand injury before illness saw him withdraw from facing MMA star Dillon Danis, 31, in March.

KSI is now due to have surgery on his busted hand with his boxing career in the air.

Meanwhile Paul, 28, returns against ex-middleweight world champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr, 39, on June 28 in a cruiserweight clash.

It comes after he fought at heavyweight in November to beat Mike Tyson, who controversially came out of retirement aged 58.

Paul now drops back down to the 200lb limit of 14st 4lb while KSI lost to Fury a stone lighter at 183lb.

Their weight disagreement has been the biggest factor standing in the way of the grudge bout.

And Bidarian said: “Not engaging in a back and forth.

“We proposed our terms to Wasserman on April 4th and the offer that followed was those exact terms. Jake Paul wants to fight KSI.

“He does not need to fight KSI. Jake has campaigned at 200+ since December of 2023 and plans to continue at that weight with the intention to contest for a world championship by the end of 2026.”

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