State of Armaments, Disarmament and International Security

About State of Armaments, Disarmament and International Security:

• It is an annual assessment of the Sweden-based think tank Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
• Highlights:
  • As on January 2023, the world has 9,576 nuclear weapons in military stockpiles for potential use.
  • That is 86 more than the number in January 2022.
  • Of this stockpile, an estimated 3,844 warheads were ‘deployed’ with missiles and aircraft.
  • Around 2,000 of these ‘deployed’ weapons — nearly all of which belonged to Russia or the USA—were kept in a state of high operational alert, meaning that they were fitted to missiles or held at airbases hosting nuclear bombers.
  • Nine nuclear-armed states — the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel — continue to modernise their nuclear arsenals and deployed several new nuclear-armed or nuclear-capable weapon systems in 2022.
  • The estimate of the size of China’s nuclear arsenal increased from 350 warheads in January 2022 to 410 in January 2023.
  • India was estimated to have a growing stockpile of about 164 nuclear weapons, up from 160 the previous year. These weapons were assigned to a maturing nuclear triad of aircraft, land-based missiles and nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs).
  • Pakistan possessed approximately 170 nuclear warheads as of January 2023 — up from 165 from the previous year.

Q1) What are nuclear weapons?

A nuclear weapon is a device that uses a nuclear reaction to create an explosion. This explosion is much more powerful than that of conventional explosives (like TNT). When a nuclear weapon explodes, it gives off four types of energy: a blast wave, intense light, heat, and radiation. Nuclear weapons can be in the form of bombs or missiles.

Source: In a year, global inventory of N-warheads rises by 86

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