In May 2011 the Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, convened a meeting of the Nuclear Command Authority-the body responsible for overseeing the country’s nuclear arsenal-to assess progress towards the goal of achieving an operational triad. There have been no official statements specifying the required size and composition of the arsenal but, according to the Ministry of Defence, it involves ‘a mix of land-based, maritime and air capabilities’ (a ‘triad’). India’s nuclear doctrine is based on the principle of a minimum credible deterrent and no-first-use of nuclear weapons. Both countries are developing and deploying new types of nuclear-capable ballistic and cruise missiles and both are increasing their military fissile material production capabilities.
India and Pakistan are increasing the size and sophistication of their nuclear arsenals. * Not including 171 tonnes to be blended down. All states with a civilian nuclear industry have some capability to produce fissile materials. The most common of these fissile materials are highly enriched uranium (HEU) and plutonium.įor their nuclear weapons, China, France, Russia, the UK and the USA have produced both HEU and plutonium India, Israel and North Korea have produced mainly plutonium and Pakistan mainly HEU.
Materials that can sustain an explosive fission chain reaction are essential for all types of nuclear explosives, from first-generation fission weapons to advanced thermonuclear weapons. In the absence of official declarations, the publicly available information is often contradictory or incorrect. Reliable information on the operational status of the nuclear arsenals and capabilities of the three states that have never been party to the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)-India, Israel and Pakistan-is especially difficult to find. China remains highly non-transparent as part of its long-standing deterrence strategy, and little information is publicly available about its nuclear forces and weapon production complex. In contrast, transparency in Russia has decreased as a result of its decision not to publicly release detailed data about its strategic nuclear forces under the 2010 Russia–USA New START treaty, even though it shares the information with the USA. France, the UK and the USA have recently disclosed important information about their nuclear capabilities. The availability of reliable information about the nuclear weapon states’ arsenals varies considerably.
If all nuclear warheads are counted-operational warheads, spares, those in both active and inactive storage, and intact warheads scheduled for dismantlement-the USA, Russia, the UK, France, China, India, Pakistan and Israel together possess a total of approximately 19 000 nuclear weapons. Nearly 2000 of these are kept in a state of high operational alert. * International Panel on Fissile MaterialsĪt the start of 2012, eight states possessed approximately 4400 operational nuclear weapons. Global stocks and production of fissile materials, 2011, Alexander Glaser and Zia Mian* North Korea’s military nuclear capabilities, Shannon N. Kile, Vitaly Fedchenko, Phillip Schell and Hans M.
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