Rising nuclear warheads

Swedish think tank Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) has released its report on nuclear warheads recently.

SIPRI is an independent international institute based in Sweden, dedicated to research into conflict, armaments, arms control and disarmament.

All nations that have nuclear weapons continue to modernise their nuclear arsenals, while India and China increased their nuclear warheads in the last one year.
China is in the middle of a significant modernisation of its nuclear arsenal. It is developing a nuclear triad for the first time, made up of new land and sea-based missiles and nuclear-capable aircraft.
A nuclear triad is a three-pronged military force structure that consists of land-launched nuclear missiles, nuclear-missile-armed submarines and strategic aircraft with nuclear bombs and missiles.

India and Pakistan are slowly increasing the size and diversity of their nuclear forces.
China’s nuclear arsenal had gone up from 290 warheads in 2019 to 320 in 2020, while India’s went up from 130-140 in 2019 to 150 in 2020. Pakistan’s arsenal was estimated to be between 150-160 in 2019 and has reached 160 in 2020. Both China and Pakistan continue to have larger nuclear arsenals than India.
The nuclear arsenals of the nuclear-armed states other than the United States and Russia were considerably smaller but all these states were either developing or deploying new weapon systems or had announced their intention to do so.
Together the nine nuclear-armed states — the U.S., Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea — possessed an estimated 13,400 nuclear weapons at the start of 2020, which marked a decrease from an estimated 13,865 nuclear weapons at the beginning of 2019.
The decrease in the overall numbers was largely due to the dismantlement of old nuclear weapons by Russia and the U.S., which together possess over 90% of the global nuclear weapons.

The U.S. and Russia have reduced their nuclear arsenals under the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) but it will lapse in February 2021 unless both parties agree to prolong it.
However, discussions to extend the New START or negotiate a new treaty made no progress with the U.S.’s insistence that China must join any future nuclear arms reduction talks, which China has categorically ruled out.
The deadlock over the New START and the collapse of the 1987 Soviet–U.S. Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles (INF Treaty) in 2019 suggest that the era of bilateral nuclear arms control agreements between Russia and the U.S. might be coming to an end.
Russia and the U.S. have already announced extensive plans to replace and modernise their nuclear warheads and delivery systems.

The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty was signed in 2010 by Russia and the United States and entered into force in 2011.
New START replaced the 1991 START I treaty, which expired in 2009, and superseded the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT).
New START caps the deployed strategic nuclear warheads and bombs of the United States at Russia at 1,550 each. The Treaty includes limits on missiles, bombers, and land-based launchers for nuclear weapons.
The Treaty also allows for verification inspections and information-sharing.
The New Start Treaty is due to expire next February.

Signed in 1987, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty required the United States and the Soviet Union to eliminate all of their nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500 kilometres.
As a result of the treaty, both countries destroyed a total of 2,692 short-, medium-, and intermediate-range missiles.
Last year, the U.S. announced its formal withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty accusing Russia of breaching the terms of the deal.

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