![]() |
Sarkozy says he wants to be more open about France’s nuclear arsenal “than anyone ever has been” about theirs. OK, does the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle still carry nuclear weapons in peacetime? |
.
By Hans M. Kristensen
The French nuclear weapons arsenal currently includes approximately 300 warheads, according to our latest estimate published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Roughly 80 percent of the warheads are for delivery by three ballistic missiles submarines. The remaining warheads are on cruise missiles for delivery by land- and sea-based strike aircraft. The total arsenal is expected to decrease further to some 290 warheads in the next few years.
Although President Nicolas Sarkozy declared in March 2008 that he had “decided that France could and should be more transparent with respect to its nuclear arsenal than anyone ever has been,” France remains the only European nuclear weapons state that has not yet declared whether its aircraft carrier still carries nuclear weapons under normal circumstances.
Background: French Nuclear Forces 2008
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 […]
On 14 April 2023, the Belarusian Ministry of Defence released a short video of a Su-25 pilot explaining his new role in delivering “special [nuclear] munitions” following his training in Russia. The features seen in the video, as well as several other open-source clues, suggest that Lida Air Base––located only 40 kilometers from the Lithuanian border and the […]
A photo in a Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) student briefing from 2022 shows four people inspecting what appears to be a damaged B61 nuclear bomb.
In early-February 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) had informed Congress that China now has more launchers for Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) than the United States. The report is the latest in a serious of revelations over the past four years about China’s growing nuclear weapons arsenal and the deepening […]