India now has more nuclear weapons than Pakistan

New Delhi: The number of nuclear weapons with India surpassed those with Pakistan in January 2024, said Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) in its latest report on Monday. These refer to the nuclear triad of aircraft and land-based missiles and nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs),

More significantly, while China has for the first time started deploying some of its nuclear warheads on missiles during peacetime, India is shifting in the direction of mating some of its warheads with their launchers, the report said. 

This reverses the stand by the two Asian giants of keeping their nuclear warheads stored away from the deployed launchers.

India increased its nuclear stockpile to 172 at the start of January against 164 last year. For Pakistan, facing an economic crisis, the count of nuclear warheads remained stagnant at 170.

China increased its nuclear warhead count to 500 from 410 last year. "China might have started mating a small number of its warheads (possibly around 24, corresponding to one missile brigade and one fully loaded ballistic missile submarine) with their launchers," the Sipri report said.

"China is expanding its nuclear arsenal faster than any other country," said Hans M. Kristensen, associate senior fellow with Sipris’s weapons of mass destruction programme. China could potentially have at least as many intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) as either Russia or the USA by the turn of the decade.

On India, Sipri said that it had long been assumed that India stored its nuclear warheads separately from its deployed launchers during peacetime. "However, the country’s recent moves towards placing missiles in canisters and

conducting sea-based deterrence patrols suggest that India could be shifting in the direction of mating some of its warheads with their launchers in peacetime," it said.

Sipri said that both India and Pakistan continued to develop new types of nuclear delivery system in 2023. While Pakistan remained the main focus of India’s nuclear deterrent, India appeared to be placing growing emphasis on longer-range weapons, including those capable of reaching targets throughout China.

It said that nine nuclear-armed states — the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and Israel — continued to modernise their nuclear arsenals and several deployed new nuclear-armed or nuclear-capable weapon systems in 2023.

"Of the total global inventory of an estimated 12,121 warheads in January 2024, about 9,585 were in military stockpiles for potential use," it said.

An estimated 3,904 of those warheads were deployed with missiles and aircraft — 60 more than in January 2023 — and the rest were in central storage, it said.

"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," the report said.

Sipri said that debate about India’s commitment to the no-first-use (NFU) policy had increased with indications since 2018 that some parts of India’s nuclear arsenal were being kept at a higher state of readiness, including possible mating of a portion of India’s warheads and launchers.

"This raises questions about whether India might be transitioning towards a limited counterforce nuclear posture to target an adversary’s nuclear weapons earlier in a crisis, even before they could be used," it said.