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Appendix 13A. World nuclear forces, 2006
Contents
SHANNON N. KILE, VITALY FEDCHENKO AND HANS M. KRISTENSEN
I. Introduction
II. US nuclear forces
III. Russian nuclear forces
IV. British nuclear forces
V. French nuclear forces
VI. Chinese nuclear forces
VII. Indian nuclear forces
VIII. Pakistani nuclear forces
IX. Israeli nuclear forces
Summary
This appendix contains tables of data on nuclear forces held by eight nuclear weapon states.
At the beginning of 2006, the five states defined in the NPT as nuclear weapon states—China, France, Russia, the UK and the USA—continued to deploy approximately 12 300 operational nuclear weapons. If all warheads are counted—deployed, spares, those in both active and inactive storage, and ‘pits’ (plutonium cores) held in reserve—these five states possessed an estimated total of 32 300 warheads. With the exception of the UK, these states all had significant nuclear weapon modernization programmes under way.
India and Pakistan, which along with Israel are de facto nuclear weapon states outside the NPT, are believed to be increasing the number of their nuclear warheads and developing new, longer-range ballistic missiles for delivering them.
Shannon N. Kile (USA) is a Senior Researcher with the SIPRI Non-proliferation and Export Controls Project.
Vitaly Fedchenko (Russia) is a Researcher with the SIPRI Reinforcing European Union Cooperative Threat Reduction Programmes Project, with responsibility for nuclear security issues and EU–Russian relations.
Hans M. Kristensen (Denmark) is the Director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) in Washington, DC.
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