Global Setting
Global Setting
Global Nuclear Arsenal
Inventory
There is no complete, verified inventory of the global nuclear arsenal. However, informed estimates put the total at approximately 23,000 nuclear warheads.
Major sources of information are:
- “Nuclear Notebook” published in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
- “World Nuclear Forces”, chapter 8 of the SIPRI Yearbook, published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
- “Status of World Nuclear Forces” on the website of the Federation of American Scientists (these data are kept up to date).
According to SIPRI, deployed warheads as of January 2009 were as follows, broken down by strategic (long-range) and non-strategic (tactical, short range):
Country |
Strategic |
Non-Strategic |
Total |
| Russia | 2,787 |
2,047 |
4,934 |
| United States | 2,202 |
500 |
2,702 |
| France | 300 |
300 |
|
| China | 186 |
186 |
|
| United Kingdom | 160 |
160 |
|
| Israel | 80 |
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| India | 60-70 |
||
| Pakistan | 60 |
||
| Total: | 8,392 |
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North Korea has conducted nuclear test explosions, but it isn’t known whether they have an operational nuclear weapon.
Russia has approximately 8,000 warheads in reserve, not deployed on delivery vehicles. The United States has about 6,700 in reserve. Many of the Russian and U.S. reserve warheads are out of service and awaiting dismantlement. Adding in these reserves makes the global total warheads over 23,000. This is down from a peak of 30,000 to 40,000 for each of the United States and Russia at the height of the Cold War. The largest portion of the reduction has come from voluntary dismantlement of tactical nuclear weapons designed for battlefield use, but strategic arms control agreements have also contributed reductions.
Between them the United States and Russia possess 95 percent of the global nuclear arsenal. Except for some modifications in recent years these nukes were developed during the Cold War. By now in 2009 they have become cold war relics, as explained on another page. They have no legitimate military utility, making them useless weapons, a point developed in another essay.
