World’s nuclear powers strengthening arsenals as geopolitical tensions grow, report finds

London CNN —

Nuclear-armed countries are strengthening their arsenals and several have made ready new nuclear-armed or nuclear-capable weapons systems amid rising geopolitical tensions, a new report has found.

The nine nuclear states – the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel – have continued to modernize their weapons stockpiles, with China, for the first time, possibly deploying “a small number of warheads on missiles during peacetime,” the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said in a new report published Monday.

“While the global total of nuclear warheads continues to fall as Cold War-era weapons are gradually dismantled, regrettably we continue to see year-on-year increases in the number of operational nuclear warheads,” the institute’s director Dan Smith said. “This trend seems likely to continue and probably accelerate in the coming years and is extremely concerning.”

In January 2024, the total global stockpile of warheads was estimated at 12,121, of which about 9,585 were in military stockpiles for potential use, according to SIPRI. The think tank estimates that 3,904 of those warheads were deployed with missiles and aircraft, or 60 more warheads than in January 2023.

A television news programme in Seoul, South Korea, shows footage of a North Korean missile test on January 1, 2020.

The majority of the deployed warheads, about 2,100, were kept “in a state of high operational alert on ballistic missiles,” SIPRI said. While nearly all of those warheads belonged to the US and Russia, for the first time China is also believed to have some warheads on high operational alert.

Russia and the US together own nearly 90 percent of all