Nuclear Weapons Information

U.S. Strategic Nuclear Forces - Structure & Capability

Nuclear History at the National Security Archive

United States

Arsenal and missile range: 12,000 warheads; 8,100 miles (13,000km)

Nuclear weapons are located in 14 states. New Mexico, Georgia, Washington, Nevada, and North Dakota are the top five and account for about 70 percent of the total. The other nine are Wyoming, Missouri, Montana, Louisiana, Texas, Nebraska, California, Virginia, and Colorado. The number of U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe has shrunk dramatically, from over 6,000 of many types in the early 1980s to some 150 B61 bombs at ten air bases in seven countries (Belgium, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Turkey, and the United Kingdom) by the end of 1997. The United States is the only country with nuclear weapons deployed outside its borders.(Source: NRDC)

Russia

Arsenal and missile range: 22,500 warheads; 6,800 miles (11,000 km)

Weapons are deployed at about 90 sites in Russia. In a little-appreciated logistical feat, Soviet, and then Russian, members of the 12th Main Directorate have consolidated, over the past decade, a far-flung arsenal of tens of thousands of nuclear weapons at hundreds of locations in Eastern Europe and 14 republics to under a hundred sites in Russia today. (Source: NRDC)

Great Britain

Arsenal and missile range: 380 warheads; 7,500 miles (12,000 km)

The British stockpile is about to be turned into a single weapon type -- the Trident II missile - An estimated 260 warheads - on Vanguard-class submarines. In 1998, the last WE-177 gravity bombs were retired, and the Tornado bombers that once carried them will have only conventional missions. (Source: NRDC)

France

Arsenal and missile range: 450 warheads; 3,300 miles (5,300 km)

The French stockpile consists of three types of warheads at four locations, down from a dozen bases at the beginning of the 1990s. That stockpile is expected to decrease to about 400 warheads of two types by 2005. (Source: NRDC)

China

Arsenal and missile range: 400 warheads; 6,800 miles (11,000 km)

The Chinese stockpile is located at some 20 sites. China is believed to have an arsenal of about 400 warheads, of two basic categories: 250 "strategic" weapons in a "triad" of land-based missiles, bombers and submarine-launched ballistic missiles; and about 150 "tactical" weapons -- low-yield bombs, artillery shells, atomic demolition munitions and possibly short-range missiles. (Source: NRDC)

India:

Arsenal and missile range: 12-18 warheads; 1,550 miles (2,500 km)

India first decided to build its own nuclear weapons after China began nuclear tests in the mid-1960s. A key factor in India's desire to be a nuclear power has been China's presence on its northern border as well as Pakistan's nuclear capability.

Indian scientists claim the five devices tested in 1998 included one with an explosive yield of 43 kilotons - more than twice the force inflicted on Hiroshima in 1945.

Pakistan:

Arsenal and missile range: 12-18 warheads; 930 miles (1,500 km)

Thought to have begun its secret weapons program in 1972 to reach parity with India, but restricted by U.S. sanctions since 1990. Tested a medium range missile in April of 1998. The following month, Pakistan responded to India's tests with six of its own.

Israel

Israel refuses to confirm or deny the widespread belief that it has the bomb, but it is believed to have over 100 atomic weapons. The center of Israel's weapons program is reported to be the Negev Nuclear Research Center near the desert town of Dimona. Former Prime Minister Shimon Peres in a rare television interview recently made a public admission that Israel began developing a "nuclear option" in the 1950s.

North Korea

North Korea put its atomic program on hold in 1994 but recently threatened to resume it if Washington did not deliver promised nuclear power plants. Under a landmark 1994 accord, the U.S. pledged to replace Pyongyang's graphite reactors, which are capable of producing weapons-grade material, with the safer light-water plants.

Iran

Iran launched a nuclear program in the 1970s but slowed it down after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The U.S. believes Iran is developing weapons using its nuclear power program.

Iraq

Iraq had its nuclear program dismantled under United Nations auspices after its defeat in the 1991 Gulf War.

Libya

Analysts believe that while Libya may be unable to develop a bomb, it has the money and apparently the desire to buy nuclear technology from the former Soviet Union. What's stopping it, they say, is a strict embargo.

Kazakhstan

Former Soviet republic supports the NPT and has given up its nuclear arms.

Ukraine

Another former Soviet republic that has rid itself of warheads.

Belarus

Possessed numerous nuclear weapons when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Has accepted the nuclear nonproliferation treaty and rid itself of warheads.

Algeria

Was in 1991 found to be building a reactor capable of producing weapons-grade material. Placed reactor under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards and is now a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Brazil

Active nuclear arms program in the 1980s was later shut down; signed the 1990 treaty for a nuclear-weapons-free zone in Latin America.

Argentina

Pursued weapons programs in the 1980s but a new democratic government decided that a change in policy was needed. By 1990, signed a treaty for a nuclear-weapons-free zone in Latin America.

South Africa

South Africa is the only nation to have successfully developed nuclear weapons, and then voluntarily relinquished that capability. Former President F.W. de Klerk announced that South Africa had not only produced nuclear weapons, but that it had also destroyed its arsenal before July 10, 1991, when South Africa accepted the NPT.

HISTORY OF NUCLEAR WARHEAD STOCKPILES -- 1945-1995

NOTE: Totals are estimates. Lists include strategic and non-strategic warheads, as well as warheads awaiting dismantling

1945 1955 1965 1975 1985 1995
UNITED STATES 6 3,057 31,265 26,675 22,941 14,766
SOVIET UNION 0 200 6,129 19,443 39,197 27,000
BRITAIN 0 10 310 350 300 300
FRANCE 0 0 32 188 360 485
CHINA 0 0 5 185 425 425
Source: National Resources Defense Council

The Internet vs. The Bomb:
Would the Internet survive the bomb?

By David L. Wilson
Special to CNN Interactive

Many myths surround the Internet, the most resilient of which holds that the system could keep delivering e-mail even if a large chunk of it was destroyed by a nuclear bomb.

While that's not entirely true, the underlying technology of the system was in part designed with just that scenario in mind.

The Internet traces its origins back to a U.S. Defense Department project during the hottest part of the Cold War. The system was originally conceived of as a way to let computer users attached to disparate networks exchange data with each other.

It was also supposed to be based on a technology that would route information around damaged parts of the network to a safe arrival at its final destination.

Research into developing such a system began with funds from the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). By 1968, researchers had hooked up the Stanford Research Institute, the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of California at Santa Barbara and the University of Utah under a network known as ARPANET, which eventually evolved into today's Internet.

The magical part of the Internet technology is a bit of software called Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. Every computer connected to the Internet has some TCP/IP software inside it.

When an e-mail message -- or anything else -- is sent over the Internet, the TCP part of the software dices it up into small units called "packets." The packets are transmitted on the Internet and then reassembled into the original message at the receiving end.

The IP part of the TCP/IP software slaps an address on each packet, to make sure each packet gets to the right destination. Those addresses are read by "routers," the computers that make the data flow through the Internet.

The routers work like the switches on a railroad, shoving traffic onto different tracks, trying to keep packets moving smoothly. If one path gets too crowded, the routers will automatically shift traffic to the next best one; if the main line becomes impassable, the routers will find the next best way to get data to its destination, assuming one exists.

It's that capability that would come in useful in the event of a nuclear attack. If a bomb in the Midwest took out the shortest path between New York and Los Angeles, for instance, the routers would work around it, perhaps sending the data through Florida and Texas to get from coast to coast.

Vinton G. Cerf, who is revered as one of the Internet's creators, says that, theoretically, if properly constructed, the system could remain functional after a nuclear strike.

"We even tested these ideas by simulating the fragmentation of the ARPANET and re-binding it using flying packet radios on Strategic Air Command aircraft in the early 1980s," recalls Cerf, who is now senior vice president for Internet architecture and engineering at MCI Communications Corp. in Washington, D.C.

That simulation, using special radios equipped with Internet technologies, proved that if a nuclear bomb dropped and the network was initially splintered, the remaining sections of the network would seek each other out and relink, continuing to transmit information across the surviving parts of the system.

But Cerf is quick to say that there was no truth to the widespread belief that the Internet, or even its predecessor ARPANET, was impervious to nuclear attack. "That was not true, although its design did make use of the robustness of packet switching to route around failures and congestion."

However, if there's no alternative path the routers can use to get data to locations on a given path, in the event of damage to that path, Internet access will disappear for anyone connected to that path.

For instance, in January 1995, a water pipe broke in a basement at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Computer users in seven states lost their Internet access when the minor flood knocked out power to a central Internet hub for Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and South Dakota.

There are numerous such chokepoints on the Internet, and a single accident, such as a road repair crew cutting an underground cable, can shut down Internet access in a wide area. Engineers would say such a system lacks redundancy; sometimes there aren't enough alternative paths to move data if the main path is closed.

The truth is that, while the Internet has its roots in the Cold War and was a Defense Department project, the system wasn't really designed for war.

"ARPANET was mostly motivated by the desire to allow computing resources to be shared among a dispersed group of users -- in the case of ARPANET specifically, these were computer science researchers at different institutions funded by ARPA," says Cerf. "Of course, the idea could be translated into military command and control scenarios, and that was a principle conceptual motivation for doing the work on ARPANET in the first place."

It's a historical irony that the Internet, a Cold War technology, will likely make its greatest contribution to promoting democracy in a post-Cold War world, allowing the free flow of information into even totalitarian societies.

"Dictators depend upon control of information," says Ira C. Magaziner, who's in charge of developing Internet policy for the White House and holds the title of senior adviser to the president for policy development.

"It's essential in the long term to maintaining a dictatorship, and the Internet makes it impossible ultimately for government to control the information that their people have access to. And I think for that reason it's going to be a tremendous democratizing force."

Dave Wilson writes about the Internet for the San Jose Mercury News, the daily newspaper in California's Silicon Valley.

Links:

Natural Resources Defense Council Links, Internet and the Bomb

FAS, Peace @nd Security Links

Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Peace Links

Center for Defense Information Links

Non-Proliferation Links, with descriptions

Links to nuclear resources and related material, with descriptions

Y2K Links, With Skeptical Comments From Nukefix

Canadian Network to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Links

International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Links

Stimson Center Links