Comment Re:Does anyone know how? (Score 1) 195
We do not test warheads from the stockpile (there's largely no point - any weapon you "test" will of course be destroyed, and you can't "test" enough of them in this way to gain statistical confidence in the stockpile). Tests are science experiments, highly instrumented, with a carefully custom-designed nuclear device that will provide the useful information you're looking for (these days it would be likely be for confirming results of computer models). Even a "hasty" test, if it were to be actually useful (and while there's no reason to test at all, there's *really* no reason to test if you're not going to get useful data), would take more than a year to set up.
Also, the weapons in the stockpile are constantly maintained, and there's really no serious question about whether they work (this is 80 year old technology, after all). The components that "wear out" are regularly serviced (this is also why the Russians are always moving warheads around because they need to be constantly serviced - it's not a giant emergency that means they're going to bomb Ukraine every time someone sees a transport train).