Nuclear Arsenals | Interactive Deterrence

Estimated warhead stockpiles, 1945–2026

Warheads assigned to military forces, by country. Drag across the chart to move the year; click a milestone marker for the treaty and its source.

1986

Then versus now

Compare 2026 with

Country pages

How to read it

Each colored band is one country's estimated stockpile: the warheads assigned to its military forces, deployed or in storage. The bands stack, so the top edge of the colored area is the sum of the countries you have switched on. The dashed line is the global total inventory published with the same series, which also counts retired warheads that are intact and waiting to be dismantled. The gap between the stack and the dashed line is mostly those retired warheads. The two series are estimated separately: in 1967–69, 1976–78 and 1980 the published global total is slightly lower (by up to about 1,300) than the sum of the national stockpiles, and the tool shows both as published.

Switch to Lines to compare countries directly, and turn on Log scale to read the arsenals of the smaller nuclear powers next to the U.S. and Russian ones. Every number is an estimate. Most governments publish nothing about their stockpiles, and the estimates for Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea are the least certain.

The milestone markers are not a claim that a treaty caused the change in the curve. SALT I limited missiles while the Soviet stockpile kept growing until 1986, and FAS says the overwhelming portion of the post-Cold War reduction happened in the 1990s.

Method

Annual stockpiles, 1945–2026, for the nine nuclear-armed states and South Africa come from Our World in Data's "Number of nuclear warheads" indicator, which processes the FAS "Estimated Global Nuclear Warhead Inventories" (Kristensen, Korda, Norris, Johns and Knight-Boyle). OWID dataset version 2026-05-13, FAS published 2026-03-30, retrieved 2026-10-07. Values are used as published, with no smoothing or interpolation.
The split into deployed strategic, deployed nonstrategic, reserve and retired warheads exists only for the latest year (2026). No year-by-year status series is published, so the timeline shows stockpiles only.
The global line is OWID's "World" series, which includes retired warheads. Before the late 1980s it sits slightly above or below the sum of national stockpiles in some years, because the historical global and national estimates were compiled separately. This tool does not derive a retired-warhead series from that difference.
FAS notes that its 2026 table figures may not add up, because of rounding and uncertainty. One example: the table lists India with 178 reserve warheads and a military stockpile of 190. The FAS page headlines about 12,187 warheads worldwide, while one of its footnotes gives 12,321; this tool uses 12,187, which matches the OWID series.
Milestone dates come from the treaty records and official statements listed below. The New START status was checked on 2026-10-06.
No delivery systems, bases or targeting information appear in this tool.

Sources

Federation of American Scientists, Hans M. Kristensen, Matt Korda, Eliana Johns, Mackenzie Knight-Boyle et al., Status of World Nuclear Forces (2026 table and footnotes), opened 2026-10-06.
Consistent with SIPRI Yearbook 2026 (June 2026): SIPRI's press release of 8 June 2026 gives the same global inventory (12,187 warheads in January 2026), military stockpiles (about 9,745) and China total (about 620).
Our World in Data, Estimated nuclear warhead stockpiles and Estimated nuclear warhead inventories (CSV downloads, CC BY 4.0), based on FAS; retrieved 2026-10-02. Regenerate with scripts/build_data.py.
NPT: U.S. State Department treaty record; UNODA.
SALT I: Office of the Historian.
INF: State Department treaty record; U.S. withdrawal statement, Aug. 2, 2019 (archived).
START I: State Department treaty text; joint statement on expiry, Dec. 4, 2009; Arms Control Association fact sheet.
CTBT: State Department treaty record; CTBTO treaty page and status table (archived; ctbto.org blocks automated requests); Kremlin, law revoking Russia's ratification, Nov. 2, 2023.
New START: State Department; 2021 extension; Kremlin statements of Feb. 21, 2023, Sept. 22, 2025 and Feb. 4, 2026; Arms Control Association fact sheet and statement of Feb. 4, 2026. The State Department page says the extension kept the treaty in force "through February 4, 2026"; the 2021 extension statement and the Kremlin give February 5.