Nuclear weapons spending soars amid rising global tensions: reports

Lina Portman3 weeks ago

0 1 minute read

Nuclear-armed countries have increased their spending on atomic weapons arsenals by 33 percent over the past five years as they modernize their stockpiles amid growing geopolitical tensions, according to two recently released reports.

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) reported that the nine nuclear-armed states collectively spent $91 billion on their arsenals last year, $10.8 billion more than the previous year, with the United States being the main player. It alone spent $51.5 billion, more than all other nuclear-armed countries combined.

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Next come China and Russia, with $11.8 billion and $8.3 billion, respectively.
The report also highlights an increase in British spending on nuclear weapons for the second year in a row, with an increase of 17 percent to $8.1 billion.

“I think it's fair to say there is a nuclear arms race going on,” ICAN head Melissa Parke told AFP.

Furthermore, another report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) suggests that these countries are injecting more funds to modernize and deploy new weapons.

It further states that while the total estimated number of nuclear warheads in the world decreased slightly from 12,512 at the start of this year to 12,121 compared to the previous year, 9,585 were kept in stockpiles for storage. of potential use, of which 2,100 were kept on high operational alert. ” on ballistic missiles.

The United States and Russia held almost all of these warheads, but China was also reported to have some warheads on high alert for the first time.

“As the total number of global nuclear warheads continues to decline as Cold War weapons are gradually dismantled, we unfortunately continue to see a year-over-year increase in the number of operational nuclear warheads,” said Dan Smith, director of Sipri.