According to Newsweek, last week, Trump announced on social media that he had ordered the Department of Defense to immediately begin testing nuclear weapons, as Russia and China—the key nuclear rivals of the U.S.—have continued testing their respective arsenals.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright later clarified that the tests will not include actual detonations like those previously carried out in the country. Instead, they will involve all other parts of a nuclear weapon to ensure they can trigger an atomic explosion.

The U.S. military has regularly tested its ICBM fleet, which is part of the nuclear triad along with nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarines and bombers, several times a year to ensure it is safe, secure, effective and practical in providing strategic deterrence.

Citing navigational warnings, Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, said the upcoming U.S. Minuteman III ICBM test launch will occur between Wednesday and Thursday.

The missile is scheduled to launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California and reach the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site on Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands in the Central Pacific, along with five designated debris zones.

If confirmed, the flight path would be similar to a previous test launch conducted in May, when an unarmed missile, equipped with a single reentry vehicle designed to carry a warhead, traveled west about 4,200 miles after launching from California.

This would also mark the second time since September that U.S. nuclear forces have conducted a test, when a submarine fired four unarmed Trident II D5 Life Extension submarine-launched ballistic missiles in the Atlantic Ocean off Florida.

DID