Pakistan still has more nuclear weapons, China twice as India: Report
China reveals its most advanced nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile, the DF-41, at the National Day parade in Beijing on October 1, 2019. Photo: Fan Lingzhi/GT. Sketched by the Pan Pacific Agency.
NEW DELHI, Jun 16, 2020, India Today. India stands seventh among the nine countries armed with nuclear weapons in terms of inventory of warheads. According to the annual report of nuclear warheads by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), both nuclear neighbours of India-China and Pakistan-have more warheads than its inventory, India Today reported.
Though SIPRI Year Book 2020 underlines lack of transparency about actual inventory of nuclear warheads, but it believes India increased its nuclear weapon count in 2019 from 130-140 to 150 warheads. But the nuclear count in its neighbourhood is higher.
Pakistan ranks sixth, with 160 nuclear warheads, just above India among the nuclear weapon countries. There is a significant development, according to SIPRI report, in Pakistan’s nuclear weapon programme.
Nuclear weapons are made using fissile material which can be either highly enriched uranium (HEU) or separated plutonium. “Pakistan has produced mainly HEU but is increasing its ability to produce plutonium,” says SIPRI in its report.
China, France, Russia, the UK and the USA have produced both HEU and plutonium for use in their nuclear weapons. India and Israel are the only countries to have produced mainly plutonium for their nuclear warheads.
China’s nuclear warhead count stands at 320 – that is, more than double the number that India has. SIPRI says China is in the middle of a significant modernisation and expansion of its arsenal.
China and Pakistan have had more nuclear warheads than India in the past as well.
The good news is that there is no active deployment of nuclear warheads in South Asia. Only four countries – the US, the UK, Russia and France — have deployed nuclear warheads. So, Indian borders are free of deployed nuclear weapons.
Of the three nuclear weapon countries in the region, China and Pakistan have strategic friendship ties, while India has declared its nuclear weapon policy as the one of “deterrence” and “no-first use”.
This eliminates, at least in theory, the nuclear weaponisation threat in the region.
At the same time, India has moved slowly to build its nuclear-triad. After developing land and air “vectors” (carriers of nuclear warheads – Agni series of missiles for the Army and Mirage-2000 and Jaguar fighters of the Air Force), India is boosting naval nuclear prowess.
INS Arihant became n-capable in 2018. INS Arighat is on the course.
India has become the third largest spender on military for the first time and is second biggest importer of arms in the world. But it still spends only a little over one-fourth of China’s military spending.
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