Nuclear Arsenals by Country (2025)

In 2025 the world’s nine nuclear-armed states hold about 12,300 warheads: roughly 9,600 in stockpiles, 3,800 deployed and more than 2,100 at launch-ready alert. The headline number has inched upward for the first time in years because every power except the United States and Russia is expanding; China has passed 600 operational warheads, Pakistan and India have flight-tested their first MIRVs, and North Korea is fielding solid-fuel ICBMs. Meanwhile, formal arms-control scaffolding is collapsing: Russia has left the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty, New START expires in February 2026 with no follow-on in sight, and no multilateral process restrains hypersonic or tactical systems. Qualitatively then, 2025 is a year of more ready weapons, faster delivery platforms and fewer rules.

The evolving global balance

The United States and Russia still account for about 88 % of all warheads, but their totals continue to fall only because both are dismantling cold-war residuals, not because they are capping operational weapons. Russia retains roughly 5 400 warheads, 1 710 of them deployed strategic, and shows signs of growing its large non-strategic stockpile despite dismantlement of retired weapons. Washington fields about 1 670 deployed strategic warheads out of a stockpile of 5 277 and faces mounting budget pressure as it tries to recapitalise its entire triad at once.

China has broken into the high-hundreds with over 600 operational warheads by mid-2024 and remains on track for 1 000 by 2030 according to the Pentagon, giving the United States two near-peer competitors for the first time.

France’s arsenal stays at about 290 warheads, but the successful M51.3 test in November 2023 and funding for the ASN4G hypersonic missile mean Paris could upload higher-yield payloads if it chose. The United Kingdom holds roughly 225 warheads yet keeps its legal ceiling at 260 while pushing forward both the Dreadnought SSBN and an all-new Astraea (A21/Mk7) warhead.

South Asia remains the only region where inventories and doctrines are growing in tandem. India’s “Mission Divyastra” Agni-5 test in March 2024 proved a multiple-warhead bus able to target most of Europe, signalling a shift toward counter-force thinking; Pakistan replied with an Ababeel MIRV launch in October 2024 and was hit by U.S. sanctions two months later. North Korea’s third successful firing of the solid-fuel Hwasong-18 in December 2023 marked the weapon’s operational entry, and April 2025 imagery shows at least one regiment equipped. Israel, outside the NPT, still keeps an estimated ~90 warheads but remains officially silent.

Modernisation and posture shifts

In the United States, the B-21 Raider stealth bomber entered low-rate initial production after Northrop absorbed a $477 million loss to accelerate fixes, while the Sentinel (LGM-35A) ICBM triggered an 81 % Nunn-McCurdy breach, pushing its first flight into FY 2026. The nuclear enterprise is also adding a high-yield B61-13 gravity bomb, whose first unit was assembled in May 2025, and preparing nuclear-certified F-35A squadrons at RAF Lakenheath to reach full operational capability this year.

Russia continues to field Yars and Avangard systems, but its heavy RS-28 Sarmat ICBM remains mired in delays and has yet to equip a regiment. In May–June 2024 Moscow conducted joint tactical-nuclear drills with Belarus, underscoring its readiness to forward-deploy warheads, and in November 2024 President Putin signed a revised doctrine lowering the threshold for nuclear use in response to conventional threats.

China is racing to close survivability gaps: construction of three giant silo fields continues, and commercial imagery indicates the first Type 096 ballistic-missile submarine is being assembled at Huludao, setting the stage for a second-generation sea-based deterrent.

France is integrating the ASN4G on future Rafale F5 aircraft to be based at Luxeuil–Saint-Sauveur, while the United Kingdom’s Astraea warhead advanced to design phase just as the keel for the first Dreadnought SSBN was laid in March 2025.