When did pakistan get nuclear weapons

The world’s nuclear powers have nearly 10,000 nuclear warheads in their arsenals. These weapons have the capacity to kill millions directly and through their impact on agriculture have likely the potential to kill billions. Nuclear weapons technology was developed during the 1930s and 1940s. The first nuclear weapons were detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Since then, controlling the proliferation of nuclear weapons has been an important issue in international relations. On this page you find several charts with the most important metrics. For an overview of the risks from nuclear weapons – and how they can be reduced – read the following essay: The states with nuclear capabilities now includes the United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea. It is a common misconception though that more and more countries are exploring and pursuing nuclear weapons since the Second World War. As the charts demonstrate, nuclear weapons peaked in the 1980, and has remained steady since the early 1990s. One way of quantifying the proliferation of nuclear weapons is to look at the stockpiles countries have. The total inventories of nuclear warheads are even larger, as stockpiles do not include retired warheads queued for dismantlement. This chart shows that the total number of stockpiled nuclear weapons in the world peaked in 1986. It should be remembered that the destructive power of nuclear warheads differs very significant...

Abdul Qadeer Khan, known as the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, died Sunday, Oct. 10, 2021 following a lengthy illness. He was 85. B.K. Bangash/AP ISLAMABAD — Abdul Qadeer Khan, a controversial figure known as the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, died Sunday of COVID-19 following a lengthy illness, his family said. He was 85. Khan, who launched Pakistan on the path to becoming a nuclear weapons power in the early 1970s, died in a hospital in the capital Islamabad, Interior Minister Sheikh Rasheed Ahmad said. Thousands of people attended a state funeral at the massive white-marble Faisal Mosque in the capital. His body was carried by an honor guard and military and political dignitaries offered funeral prayers. Flags in Pakistan flew at half-staff. Khan was mired in controversy that began even before he returned to Pakistan from the Netherlands in the 1970s, where he had worked at a nuclear research facility. He was later accused of stealing the centrifuge uranium enrichment technology from the Netherlands facility that he would later use to develop Pakistan's first nuclear weapon, according to research done by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Khan, who held a doctorate in metallurgical engineering from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, offered to launch Pakistan's nuclear weapons program in 1974 after neighbor India conducted its first "peaceful nuclear explosion." He reached out to then-Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto offering technology...

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript. Buy or subscribe Nuclear tensions are escalating between south Asia’s two superpowers — India and Pakistan — following the Indian defence minister's announcement earlier this month that India may revoke its current commitment to only use nuclear weapons in retaliation for a nuclear attack, known as ‘no first use’.

In 1993, South Africa announced to a largely surprised world that it had built nuclear weapons in the 1980s, before dismantling its arsenal. For the first time, a country outside of the elite world powers had obtained nuclear capabilities while keeping matters a secret from almost everyone else. To this day, South Africa remains the only country to have pulled off that exact trick. Other countries have gone nuclear in other ways. A half-dozen countries with more economic and political clout than South Africa have built weapons on their own timetables. Three other countries — Israel, Pakistan, and North Korea — have developed nuclear weapons while being supported by larger allies. And many wealthy countries, including Australia, Brazil, Germany, Japan, and South Korea, have chosen not to pursue weapons programs. Recognizing these different paths to proliferation is an essential part of arms control: Grasping how one country is pursuing nuclear weapons can help other countries constrain that pursuit. “There’s meaningful variation in how states have thought about pursuing nuclear weapons,” says says Vipin Narang, an MIT political scientist and expert on nuclear strategy. “It changes how we think about stopping them. It changes how we think about managing them. It’s an important question.” Narang believes that too often, we imagine that all countries pursue nuclear weapons the way the U.S. and Soviet Union did during and after World War II — a swift race culminating in the rap...

Sandwiched between Iran, China, India and Afghanistan, Pakistan lives in a complicated neighborhood with a variety of security issues. One of the nine known states known to have nuclear weapons, Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and doctrine are continually evolving to match perceived threats. A nuclear power for decades, Pakistan is now attempting to construct a nuclear triad of its own, making its nuclear arsenal resilient and capable of devastating retaliatory strikes. Pakistan’s nuclear program goes back to the 1950s, during the early days of its rivalry with India. President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto The program became a higher priority after the country’s 1971 defeat at the hands of India, which caused East Pakistan to break away and become Bangladesh. Experts believe the humiliating loss of territory, Pakistan began the process of accumulating the necessary fuel for nuclear weapons, enriched uranium and plutonium. The country was particularly helped by one A.Q. Khan, a metallurgist working in the West who returned to his home country in 1975 with centrifuge designs and business contacts necessary to begin the enrichment process. Pakistan’s program was assisted by European countries and a clandestine equipment-acquisition program designed to do an end run on nonproliferation efforts. Outside countries eventually dropped out as the true purpose of the program became clear, but the clandestine effort continued. Exactly when Pakistan had completed its first nuclear device is murky. ...

NEW DELHI, March 11 (Reuters) - India's defence ministry on Friday said a missile had been accidentally fired into neighbouring Pakistan after a "technical malfunction", putting the spotlight once again on the nuclear arsenals of the South Asian arch rivals. Both countries have pledged no first use of a nuclear weapon, but the accident immediately raised questions about the safety mechanisms in their systems. Below is a look at their nuclear capabilities: ARSENAL SIZE Both countries possess nuclear arsenals of comparable size. Pakistan holds about 100–120 nuclear weapons, which can be delivered by aircraft and land-based missiles, while India's nuclear arsenal is around 90-110 nuclear weapons, according to estimates by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Of the world's nine nuclear-armed countries, India and Pakistan are also among the handful that have been increasing their nuclear warhead stockpiles, according to the Federation of American Scientists (FAS). DELIVERY SYSTEMS Pakistan's nuclear delivery systems include at least four short-range and two medium-range ballistic missiles, according to the U.S.-based Arms Control Association (ACA). Several more missiles, including an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) with a range of 7,000 kilometres, are under development. India, which is also developing two intercontinental ballistic missiles, already has a intermediate-range ballistic missile that can deliver a single warhead over 3,000 km, according...