Nuclear Weapons

Size of Nuclear Stockpile to be Disclosed

05.03.10 | 2 min read | Text by Steven Aftergood

Updated below

In an historic step, the U.S. Government will formally reveal the number of nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal.

Until now, the shifting size of the nuclear arsenal had only been declassified from 1945 up to 1961.  Current stockpile figures were the subject of more or less informed speculation.  The pending disclosure was first reported by the Washington Post.

Among other things, the declassification of the nuclear stockpile is a milestone in secrecy reform.  It means that what must be the single most significant number in the domain of national security policy will now be in the public domain.  It will also set a standard by which the nuclear transparency policies of other nations may be assessed.

If there is any cause for dismay in today’s announcement, it is that it took so long to accomplish.  The Department of Energy, which has the highest concentration of nuclear weapons expertise in the federal government, had proposed declassification of stockpile size as early as 1992, as noted in a 2000 DOE fact sheet on the subject.  But the DOE proposal was blocked by the Department of Defense.

Other DOE declassification proposals that have been stymied would have disclosed the explosive yield of retired or dismantled nuclear weapons (blocked by DOD), and the locations of former nuclear weapons storage sites abroad (blocked by DOD and State).  An Energy Department classification official told Secrecy News last week that the Department also favors public disclosure of the budget of the DOE Office of Intelligence (which had been public information up until 2004), but that the Director of National Intelligence had vetoed the move.

“We get blamed for a lot of stuff that’s not our fault,” the DOE official said.

Update: The newly declassified stockpile data were released by the Department of Defense in Fact Sheet: Increasing Transparency in the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Stockpile (pdf), May 3, 2010. A DoD background briefing on the new disclosure is here.

publications
See all publications
Nuclear Weapons
Report
Nuclear Notebook: Russian Nuclear Weapons, 2023

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 […]

05.08.23 | 1 min read
read more
Nuclear Weapons
Blog
Video Indicates that Lida Air Base Might Get Russian “Nuclear Sharing” Mission in Belarus

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 […]

04.19.23 | 7 min read
read more
Nuclear Weapons
Blog
Was There a U.S. Nuclear Weapons Accident At a Dutch Air Base? [no, it was training, see update below]

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.

04.03.23 | 7 min read
read more
Nuclear Weapons
Blog
STRATCOM Says China Has More ICBM Launchers Than The United States – We Have Questions

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 […]

02.10.23 | 6 min read
read more