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Recent research has revealed new facts about the British nuclear arsenal over a 25-year period starting in 1953. This accounting and the authors’ own research support an estimate that the British produced about 1,250 nuclear warheads between 1953 and 2013.

Russia is in the middle of modernizing its nuclear forces, replacing Soviet-era ballistic missiles with fewer improved missiles. In a decade, almost all Soviet-era weapons will be gone, leaving a smaller but still effective force that will be more mobile than what it replaced.

In this Nuclear Notebook, guest author Timothy McDonnell reviews the five states that developed nuclear weapons outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty—India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, and South Africa—and explores the milestones associated with each country’s weapons program.

In this Nuclear Notebook, the authors write about nonstrategic nuclear weapons—starting with the difficulty of finding a universal definition for them. Although the United States and Russia have reduced their nonstrategic stockpiles, significant inventories remain.

As of early 2012, the United States maintained an estimated 2,150 operational warheads. The arsenal is composed of roughly 1,950 strategic warheads deployed on 798 strategic delivery vehicles, as well as nearly 200 nonstrategic warheads deployed in Europe.

In this Nuclear Notebook the authors highlight the key milestones and facts regarding the nuclear pursuits of the first five states to develop nuclear weapons—the United States, the Soviet Union and Russia, Britain, France, and China.