ISLAMABAD – Pakistan, India and China continue to produce nuclear weaponsand have increased their stockpile in the last one year. While Pakistan hasapproximately 150-160 nuclear weapons in its arsenal, China boasts of 290with India having 130-140 bombs, according to The Stockholm InternationalPeace Research Institute (SIPRI) Yearbook 2019 released on Monday.
China possessed 280 nuclear bombs in the beginning of 2019 but has nowincreased it to 290. Similarly, Pakistan’s stockpile has gone up from140-150 to 150-160, Israel 80 to 80-90 and North Korea has doubled itsarsenal from 10-20 to 20-30.
On the other hand, India has 130-140 nuclear bombs, the same number that ithad at the start of 2018.
“China, India and Pakistan are increasing the size of their nucleararsenals. ‘India and Pakistan are expanding their military fissile materialproduction capabilities on a scale that may lead to significant increasesin the size of their nuclear weapon inventories over the next decade,” saysShannon Kile, Director of SIPRI’s Nuclear Disarmament, Arms Control andNon-proliferation Programme.
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But The SIPRI Yearbook 2019 claims that the number of nuclear weapons inthe beginning of 2019 has actually decreased from 2018. Nine countries -the United States of America, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China,India, Pakistan, Israel and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea(North Korea) – have approximately 13,865 nuclear weapons, which is adecrease of 600 from the number of bombs (14,465) at the start of 2018.
