The Nation:
two bordering, rival countries are increasing their capacities: India is beefing up its nuclear-capable ballistic missile program and speeding up its plutonium production, while neighboring Pakistan is developing battlefield nuclear weapons in a bid to offset India’s superior conventional forces.
Pakistan’s “nuclear arsenal may increase significantly over the next decade,” the institute warned.
The world’s biggest nuclear powers, the US and Russia, are slowly reducing their nuclear arsenals but are modernising their capacities, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said on Monday.
Nine states — the US, Russia, Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea — had 15,395 nuclear warheads at the start of 2016, including 4,120 which were operationally deployed, the institutes’s annual report said.
At the beginning of 2015, the number was 15,850.
