Publication

This fact sheet provides an inventory update on the nine nuclear weapon-possessing nations in the world and also highlights recent nuclear force developments. In the first case, the text’s authors note that at the beginning 2016 the nine states possessed approximately 4,120 operationally deployed nuclear weapons and a total of 15,395 nuclear weapons. The latter number is something to cheer about, given the nearly 70,000 weapons that existed in the mid-1980s, but the rate of reduction appears to be slowing. Neither Russia nor the US, for example, has significantly reduced its deployed strategic nuclear forces over the last five years and – just like all the other nuclear powers – they are busy modernizing their arsenals.