{"id":50763,"date":"2025-06-18T11:10:17","date_gmt":"2025-06-18T05:40:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=50763"},"modified":"2025-06-18T13:42:51","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T08:12:51","slug":"global-nuclear-arsenal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/global-nuclear-arsenal\/","title":{"rendered":"Global Nuclear Arsenal"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>Global Nuclear Arsenal Latest News<\/b><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) recently revealed in its new yearbook 2025 that nine countries worldwide possess as many as 12,241 nuclear weapons as of January 1, 2025.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b>About Global Nuclear Arsenal<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At the start of 2025, <\/span><b>nine states <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">together possessed approximately <\/span><b>12,241 nuclear weapons.<\/b><\/li>\n<li><b>Which countries have nuclear warheads? <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As per the report, the nine nuclear-armed states are the <\/span><b>US, Russia<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, the <\/span><b>United Kingdom <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(UK), <\/span><b>France, China, India, Pakistan,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> the Democratic People\u2019s Republic of Korea (<\/span><b>North Korea), and Israel.<\/b><\/li>\n<li><b>How many nuclear warheads do these countries have?<\/b>\n<ul style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<li><b>Russia: 5,459<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> nuclear weapons\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li><b>US: 5,177 <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">nuclear weapons<\/span><\/li>\n<li><b>China: 600 <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">nuclear weapons<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">France: 290 nuclear weapons<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">UK: 225 nuclear weapons<\/span><\/li>\n<li><b>India: 180<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> nuclear weapons<\/span><\/li>\n<li><b>Pakistan: 170<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> nuclear weapons<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Israel: 90 nuclear weapons<\/span><\/li>\n<li><b>North Korea: 50<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> nuclear weapons<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The report said that these <\/span><b>countries &#8220;continued intensive nuclear modernisation programmes<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in 2024, upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions&#8221;.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The report further revealed that of the <\/span><b>total global inventory<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of an estimated<\/span><b> 12,241 warheads<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in January 2025, about<\/span><b> 9,614 were in military stockpiles for potential use.<\/b><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">An estimated <\/span><b>3,912<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of those warheads were <\/span><b>deployed with missiles and aircraft<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, and the <\/span><b>rest were in central storage.<\/b><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Around<\/span><b> 2,100 <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">of the <\/span><b>deployed warheads<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> were kept in a<\/span><b> state of high operational alert on ballistic missiles.<\/b><\/li>\n<li><b>China\u2019s<\/b> <b>nuclear arsena<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">l is <\/span><b>growing faster than any othe<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">r country\u2019s, by about <\/span><b>100 new warheads a year since 2023.<\/b><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It also mentioned that <\/span><b>India <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">is believed to have once again <\/span><b>slightly expanded<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> its nuclear arsenal in 2024 and<\/span><b> continued to develop new types of nuclear delivery systems<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, including potentially canisterised missiles capable of carrying multiple warheads.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><b>Russia and the USA<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> together possess around<\/span><b> 90 percent of all nuclear weapons.<\/b><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The U.S. has 1,770 deployed and 1,930 stored warheads, while its inventory stands at 5,177 in 2025 compared with 5,328 in 2024.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Russia has 1,718 deployed and 2,591 stored warheads, and its inventory stands at 5,459, as against 5,580 in 2024.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Overall, the number of <\/span><b>nuclear warheads in the world continues to decline<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, due to the <\/span><b>USA and Russia dismantling retired warheads.<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Source<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/news\/international\/nine-countries-possess-nuclear-weapons-russia-holds-largest-stockpile\/article69705216.ece\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">TH<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Russia and the USA collectively hold about 90% of the world\u2019s total nuclear arsenal, dominating global nuclear capabilities. Read more about Global Nuclear Arsenal, SIPRI Report, Latest News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":50799,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[904,21,22,23],"class_list":{"0":"post-50763","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"tag-global-nuclear-arsenal","9":"tag-prelims-pointers","10":"tag-upsc-current-affairs","11":"tag-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","12":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}