Era of decrease in the number of nuclear weapons is over: ‘dangerous new race’

The nine core powers in the world will expand and modernize their arsenal after years of dismantling nuclear heads. This creates « a dangerous new nuclear race » in a time when arms control is under great pressure.

That is what the Swedish research institute Sipri states in an annual study of the global defense fencing and international arms trade. « The era of decrease in the number of nuclear weapons in the world, which has lasted since the end of the Cold War, is coming to an end, » said researcher Hans Kristensen van Sipri in a press release. « Instead, we see a clear trend of growing nuclear weapons arsenals, sharper nuclear rhetoric and the cancellation of weapon management agreement. »

The total number of core heads this year is slightly less than in 2024 this year, when the nine countries jointly had 12,405 nuclear heads. The Sipri sets this on the basis of research in public sources in particular. 3,912 can be used quickly of those weapons. Of these, there are approximately 2,100 nuclear heads on ballistic missiles in high condition of readiness.

China is slowly but surely expanding his arsenal

The United States and Russia together have 90 percent of the nuclear weapons. Thanks to international agreements, the most important of which is the non-proliferation agreement from 1968, the number of nuclear heads has been falling for years because the US and Russia dismantled discarded weapons. However, the decrease decreases, the Swedish institute sees. The speed at which discarded nuclear heads are dismantled will soon be surpassed by the speed with which new nuclear heads will end up in the worldwide stocks. Russia in particular has problems financing the nuclear expansion plans for the number of nuclear weapons. According to American information, Russia was planning to increase the number of smaller, tactical nuclear weapons in 2020, but this has not yet been implemented.

China: 100 core heads there

China, the third nuclear force in the world, is slowly expanding his arsenal. The country now has six hundred nuclear heads, a hundred more than a year ago. The expectation is that China will have 1,500 core heads in 2035, still only about a third of the current Russian and American stocks. The nuclear arsenals of the other nuclear weapon states (France, the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel) are smaller, but according to Sipri they are all busy developing and using new weapon systems.

Israel has never publicly acknowledged that it has nuclear weapons, but the Swedish Institute writes that ‘it is assumed’ that the country is modernizing its stock. In 2024, Israel carried out a test with a rocket propulsion system for ballistic missiles with nuclear capacity. Israel also seems to be busy upgrading his plutonium production reactor in Dimona in the south of the country. Dimona was one of the places last year where a rocket hit Iranian air strikes.

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