India appears to be expanding its nuclear arsenal, claims SIPRI

What is the News?

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) has released the findings of SIPRI Yearbook 2022. 

What are the key findings of the report?

Nuclear Arsenals:

Globally: 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)—continue to modernize their nuclear arsenals.

Russia and the USA together possess over 90% of all nuclear weapons. However, in 2021, the number of nuclear warheads in both countries declined, but this was mainly due to the dismantling of discarded warheads, which the military had already abandoned years ago.

China had 350 nuclear warheads in January 2021 as well as January 2022.

India: India had 160 nuclear warheads as of January 2022. India has expanded its nuclear stockpile from 156 in January 2021 to 160 in January 2022.

Note: India does not share official data on its nuclear arsenal.

Global Military Expenditure: Global military expenditure rose for the seventh consecutive year in 2021 to reach US$2113 billion, exceeding $2 trillion for the first time. 

Importers and Exporters of Major Arms: The five largest arms exporters in 2017-21 are – the United States, Russia, France, China and Germany.They accounted for 77% of the total volume of exports of major arms.

The five largest arms importers were India, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Australia and China, which together accounted for 38% of total arms imports. 

The region that received the largest volume of major arms supplies in 2017–21 was Asia and Oceania, accounting for 43% of the total.

Source: The post is based on the article “India appears to be expanding its nuclear arsenal, claims SIPRI” published in The Hindu on 13th June 2022.