China boosting nuclear arsenal, has 3x India's warheads: SIPRI

NEW DELHI: China is boosting its nuclear arsenal faster than any other country around the globe, and now has triple the number of warheads that India has, while it also deploys some of them on "high operational alert" on ballistic missiles.

Pakistan, in turn, maintains its rough parity with India in the number of nuclear warheads, while Russia and the US are leagues ahead of others, together accounting for 90% of all nuclear weapons.

China now has 500 warheads, up from 410 in January 2023, while India has 172 (from 164 in 2023) and Pakistan 170 (unchanged from 2023), as per the latest assessment by the Stockholm International Peace Institute (SIPRI) released on Monday.

The Indian defence establishment, however, remains confident of its strategic deterrence capability, which is poised to get some additional teeth after the already-inducted over 5,000-km range Agni-5 ballistic missile was tested for the first time with multiple-warhead capability on March 11 this year.

Moreover, India is increasingly going in for more canister-launch missiles - with the warhead already mated with the missile - for the requisite operational readiness and flexibility to store it for long periods, swiftly transport it through rail or road, and fire it whenever required.

India is also set to strengthen its weakest leg of the nuclear triad by finally commissioning its second SSBN (naval parlance for nuclear-propelled submarines armed with nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles), INS Arighat, within the next few months. The first, INS Arihant, became operational in 2018.

SIPRI said the deterrence role of nuclear weapons has grown amid the ongoing geopolitical turmoil over conflicts like the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas ones. All the nine nuclear-armed states continue to modernise their nuclear arsenals, with several deploying new nuclear-armed or nuclear-capable weapon systems in 2023, it said.

The nuclear stockpiles stand at: Russia (4,380 warheads), US (3,708), France (290), UK (225), Israel (90) and North Korea (50). An estimated 3,904 of these warheads are deployed with missiles and aircraft, with the rest being kept in storage.

"Around 2,100 of the deployed warheads were kept in a state of high operational alert on ballistic missiles. Nearly all of these warheads belonged to Russia or the US, but for the first time China is believed to have some warheads on high operational alert," SIPRI said.

The Pentagon, in a report last Oct, had said China was fully on course to reach over 1,000 warheads by 2030, while it also builds a formidable arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). The Swedish think-tank, on its part, said China could potentially have at least as many ICBMs as Russia or the US by the turn of the decade, although its stockpile of nuclear warheads is still expected to remain much smaller than their stockpiles.

SIPRI also said India, Pakistan and North Korea are all pursuing the capability to deploy multiple warheads on ballistic missiles, a capability that the US, UK, Russia, France and China already have. "This would enable a rapid potential increase in deployed warheads, as well as the possibility for nuclear-armed countries to threaten the destruction of significantly more targets," it said.