Jahresbericht von SIPRI, 12.6.2023, (engl. Original)
At the start of 2023, nine states—the United States, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea) and Israel—together possessed approximately 12 512 nuclear weapons, of which 9576 were considered to be potentially operationally available. An estimated 3844 of these warheads were deployed with operational forces, including about 2000 that were kept in a state of high operational alert—the same number as the previous year.
Overall, the number of nuclear warheads in the world continues to decline. However, this is primarily due to the USA and Russia dismantling retired war heads. Global reductions of operational warheads appear to have stalled, and their numbers are rising again. At the same time, both the USA and Russia have extensive and expensive programmes under way to replace and modernize their nuclear warheads, their missile, aircraft and submarine delivery systems, and their nuclear weapon production facilities.
China is in the middle of a significant modernization and expansion of its nuclear arsenal. Its nuclear stockpile is expected to continue growing over the coming decade and some projections suggest that it will deploy at least as many intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) as either Russia or the USA in that period. However, China’s overall nuclear warhead stockpile is still expected to remain smaller than that of either of those states.
Das vollständige Kapitel über die weltweiten Nuklearstreitkräfte finden Sie hier.