We're going to test the effect of nuclear weapons on San Franscisco so we can understand the effects of nuclear weapons on San Franscisco so we can protect San Francisco from a future attack by nuclear weapons or so we can understand the effect of the nuclear blast on Vladivostok. Sounds rather like the Tuskeegee Syphilis Experiment. To be fair though, the United States of far from the only country that has done this sort of thing.
They were testing the distribution method and trying to do so in a harmless way.
A better comparison would be "we're gonna load a shipping container with a bomb casing full of concrete and irradiated enough to look like a live nuclear weapon, then try to sneak it into the port and see if we get caught."
