Will Pakistan Soon Have the World’s Third-Largest Nuclear Arsenal?
Just how many nuclear weapons does Pakistan have?
By Franz-Stefan Gady
August 31, 2015
As my colleague Prashanth Parameswaran already reported last week (See: “Time for Pakistan to Change its Nuclear Strategy: Experts”), a new paper by two American think tanks titled “A Normal Nuclear Pakistan” argues that Pakistan could have the third-biggest nuclear stockpile within a decade and could end up producing 20 nuclear warheads annually.
Furthermore, the report, co-written by two scholars of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Stimson Center, notes that Islamabad is successfully competing with – and likely outperforming – New Delhi in the build-up of its nuclear arsenal.
“Pakistan operates four plutonium production reactors; India operates one. Pakistan has the capability to produce perhaps 20 nuclear warheads annually; India appears to be producing about five warheads annually,” the report states.
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