Appendix 12A. World nuclear forces

Summary

Appendix 12A contains tables of the nuclear forces held by the USA, Russia, the UK, France, China, India, Pakistan and Israel. In 2004 the five states defined by the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (Non-Proliferation Treaty, NPT) as nuclear weapon states—China, France, Russia, the UK and the USA—continued to deploy more than 13 000 operational nuclear weapons. If all warheads are counted—deployed, spares, those in both active and inactive storage, and ‘pits’ (plutonium cores) held in reserve—the five nuclear-weapon states possessed an estimated total of 32 300 warheads. All of these states, with the exception of the UK, had significant nuclear weapon modernization programmes under way. In the USA, Congress voted not to authorize funding for continued research work on new types of earth-penetrating and low yield nuclear weapons. Critics had charged that these programmes weakened international efforts to delegitimize nuclear weapons as military instruments.

India and Pakistan, which along with Israel are de facto nuclear weapon states outside the NPT, are believed to be increasing the number of their nuclear warheads and developing new, longer-range ballistic missiles for delivering them.