Despite an overall decrease in the number of nuclear warheads in 2020, more have been deployed with operational forces, APA reports citing a report of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
"The nine nuclear-armed states—the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea)—together possessed an estimated 13 080 nuclear weapons at the start of 2021. This marked a decrease from the 13 400 that SIPRI estimated these states possessed at the beginning of 2020.
Despite this overall decrease, the estimated number of nuclear weapons currently deployed with operational forces increased to 3825, from 3720 last year. Around 2000 of these—nearly all of which belonged to Russia or the USA—were kept in a state of high operational alert.
While the USA and Russia continued to reduce their overall nuclear weapon inventories by dismantling retired warheads in 2020, both are estimated to have had around 50 more nuclear warheads in operational deployment at the start of 2021 than a year earlier," noted in the report.
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