[familyop]

"Are they building these without testing? If they are testing, how come we don’t hear about it? Or, is testing allowed under some yield threshold?"

We and the Russians have already done so many different kinds of tests and have so much data from those, that testing isn't often needed for design any more, if at all.

[Pearls Before Swine]

I thought that we had decided to refrain from nuclear tests many years ago, as had the Russians. There were concerns that even for in-service weapons, the lack of testing and reliance on computer projections might not be enough for the long term operational viability of the existing arsenal.

Now, these micro (for nuclear) yield weapons are so different from what has been used before, that I wondered if testing was necessary.