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That would be this thermonuclear test:

Thanks. I originally found it in a somewhat condensed form in Reader's Digest.

The W87 is a 300-kt warhead (the W87-1 upgrade shouldn't change that), but, yes, that's the current plan. But because the W87-1 program has fallen behind schedule, the NNSA plans to initially field a version known as W87-0 with the new ICBMs. Los Alamos produced the first W87-1 Pu pit in Oct. 2024.

Teller: “… To develop the bomb was right. To drop it was wrong. We could have used [it] to end the war without bloodshed by exploding it high over Tokyo at night without prior warning. … If that had happened [and Japan surrendered], it would have been a tremendous moral as well as military victory.”

In the same issue, J. Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller were asked, “Would you make the bomb again?” Oppenheimer: “… In that world, in that war, it was the only thing to do. I only regret that it was not done two years earlier. It would have saved a million or more lives.”

A scan of Auden’s essay is available via TimesMachine (for New York Times subscribers) at www.nytimes.com/1965/08/01/a.... Unfortunately, the second page (page 19) is missing.

The Corruption Of Innocent Neutrons (Published 1965)W H Auden article on moral implications of nuclear powerwww.nytimes.com

Auden wrote this essay when he was 58 years old. Its publication in the New York Times Magazine, along with several other articles about nuclear weapons and the atomic age, was timed to coincide with the 20th commemorations of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

TEAK, which was not announced in advance in Hawai’i, aimed to assess the effects of a nuclear explosion’s high-energy X-rays on reentry vehicles (in order to develop an antiballistic missile system and protect US warheads from Soviet nuclear explosions) and study disruption of radio communications.

The huge explosion turned night into day. Within 10 milliseconds, the fireball was 10 miles across. At one second, it was 40 miles wide. TEAK disrupted military and civilian communications from Australia to Hawai’i, and Johnston Island was effectively blacked out for 8 hours.

(Yes, that’s ex-Nazi Wernher von Braun above in the silver hard hat and Hawaiian shirt. He led the team that developed the Redstone.) Even at that significant distance, the TEAK explosion’s thermal pulse was so intense that observers on Johnston Island had to scramble for shelter for a few moments:

Hardtack Teak outer space detonationYouTube video by atomcentralwww.youtube.com

For 31 years, the 18-member JCAE (nine each from the House and Senate) had exclusive access to secret information about and wielded extraordinary legislative power over the US nuclear arsenal (and civilian nuclear energy programs), authorizing and later appropriating all funding. Case in point:

Sen. Brien McMahon (Democrat of Connecticut, in the dark suit with the pocket handkerchief) wrote the original bill and became chairman of the new Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (1946-47; 1949-52), the only congressional committee created by an act of legislation (the Atomic Energy Act of 1946).

Video here (starting at 1:30):

🇺🇸 President Trump Travels to Bedminster for Weekend after Cabinet Meeting at Camp David [LIVE]YouTube video by MAGNO NEWSwww.youtube.com

This afternoon, after Trump’s Cabinet meeting at Camp David, the White House Military Office Air Force aide boarded Marine One with the “Football” bound for Hagerstown Regional Airport, Maryland, then Morristown Municipal Airport, New Jersey, and finally Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, NJ.

Here is a clearer view of the Presidential Emergency Satchel this morning (via Fox News):

Last year, proponents of a more aggressive US nuclear posture against Russia, China, and North Korea began publicly advocating Trump upload numerous warheads now in storage onto Minuteman III ICBMs and Trident D5/LE SLBMs, to quickly deploy up to 2,044 additional warheads once New START expired.

New START, which replaced START I in 2011 and required even deeper cuts, was the last remaining bilateral treaty putting any legal and verifiable constraints on the US and Russian nuclear arsenals, expired on February 5, 2026.

Today, the United States and Russia deploy 745 and 595 ICBMs, SLBMs, and long-range bombers, respectively, which carry ~1,670 and ~1,796 strategic nuclear weapons, respectively. Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan no longer possess any of the nuclear weapons they inherited after the USSR collapsed.

On May 23, 1992, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan signed the Lisbon Protocol, making them states parties to the treaty following the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 26, 1991.

START I was the first strategic arms control treaty to require both the reduction and verified elimination of strategic nuclear delivery vehicles (instead of only placing an upper limit on how many each side could have). But the counting rules allowed each to possess more than 6,000 total warheads.