Nuclear Policy and strategy, De-alerting,
Nuclear Weapons
Hans M. Kristensen is Director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists where he provides the public with analysis and background information about the status of nuclear forces and the role of nuclear weapons. He specializes in using open sources and the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in his research to increase transparency of nuclear arsenals and is a frequent consultant to and is widely referenced in the news media on the role and status of nuclear weapons.
His collaboration with researchers at the Natural Resources Defense Council in 2010 resulted in an estimate of the size of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile that was only 13 weapons off the actual number declassified by the U.S. government. Likewise, his estimates of Russian and Chinese nuclear stockpiles have been close to U.S. government numbers.
Kristensen is co-author of the Nuclear Notebook column in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the World Nuclear Forces overview in the SIPRI Yearbook, which he has co-authored since 2001. The Nuclear Notebook is, according to the publisher, “widely regarded as the most accurate source of information on nuclear weapons and weapons facilities available to the public.” Past Nuclear Notebook columns can be found here. A full listing of Kristensen’s publications can be found here.
Between 2002 and 2005, Kristensen was a consultant to the nuclear program at the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, D.C, where he researched and published on nuclear weapons issues. Between 1998 and 2002, Kristensen directed the Nuclear Strategy Project at the Nautilus Institute in Berkeley, CA, and he was a Special Advisor to the Danish Ministry of Defense in 1997-1998 as a member of the Danish Defense Commission. He was a Senior Researcher with the Nuclear Information Unit of Greenpeace International in Washington D.C from 1991 to 1996, prior to which he coordinated the Greenpeace Nuclear Free Seas Campaign in Denmark, Norway, Finland and Sweden.
The United States Air Force has forward deployed about one-third of its B-2 stealth bombers to Diego Garcia, or about half the B-2s considered fully operational at any given time.
In an era of such massive sweeps upending federal programs, increased transparency is even more important to provide the public with the knowledge necessary to respond and hold the government accountable.
Even without weapons present, the addition of a large nuclear air base in northern Europe is a significant new development that would have been inconceivable just a decade-and-a-half ago.
The Department of Defense has finally released the 2024 version of the China Military Power Report.
In early November 2024, the United States released a report describing the fourth revision to its nuclear employment strategy since the end of the Cold War and the third since 2013.
Known as Steadfast Noon, the two-week long exercise involves more than 60 aircraft from 13 countries and more than 2,000 personnel.
The Federation of American Scientists applauds the United States for declassifying the number of nuclear warheads in its military stockpile and the number of retired and dismantled warheads.
A military depot in central Belarus has recently been upgraded with additional security perimeters and an access point that indicate it could be intended for housing Russian nuclear warheads for Belarus’ Russia-supplied Iskander missile launchers.
The Indian government announced yesterday that it had conducted the first flight test of its Agni-5 ballistic missile “with Multiple Independently Targetable Re-Entry Vehicle (MIRV) technology.
Analyzing and estimating China’s nuclear forces is challenging, particularly given the relative lack of state-originating data and the tight control of messaging surrounding the country’s nuclear arsenal and doctrine.
The Dutch air base at Volkel appears to have started integration training with the new U.S. B61-12 guided nuclear gravity bomb in 2021, even before the bomb went into full-scale production and entered the U.S. stockpile in 2022.
The FAS Nuclear Notebook is one of the most widely sourced reference materials worldwide for reliable information about the status of nuclear weapons and has been published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists since 1987. The Nuclear Notebook is researched and written by the staff of the Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project: Director Hans […]