ENTRE News – The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) yearbook states that China is developing its nuclear forces faster than other countries. China is likely to produce more intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) than Russia or the United States (US) in a decade.
According to the report, China added 90 more warheads to its nuclear stockpile, bringing the total to 500 warheads in January this year. The book states that the total number of ICBMs currently owned is around 238. This number could surpass the US’s 800 or even Russia’s 1,244 in the next 10 years.
However, overall, the size of nuclear arsenals is expected to remain much smaller than that of the two largest nuclear powers. The report states that America has 5,044 warheads FOR4D. Meanwhile Russia has 5,580 warheads.
“China is expanding its nuclear arsenal faster than any other country,” said Hans Kristensen FOR4D, senior researcher at SIPRI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Program.
“But in almost all nuclear-armed states, there are plans or significant drives to increase nuclear forces,” he added.
The report said China is building around 350 new silos for land-based ballistic missiles. If China fills every new silo it is building with single-warhead missiles, then in the next decade, China will increase the number of deployable warheads on its ICBMs to about 650 FOR4D.
However, reports state it is unclear what China plans for the silos. If the silos were used to store missiles equipped with Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry Vehicles (MIRVs), the number of ICBM warheads could increase to more than 1,200.