Although India has a slight edge over Pakistan in terms of the number of nuclear warheads, it is far behind China, said the global arms watchdog Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, or SIPRI, on Monday.

According to the organisation’s assessment, India has 180 nuclear warheads, while Pakistan has 170.

China is estimated to have 600 nuclear warheads as of January. Of these, 24 are deployed warheads, which means that they are either placed on missiles or are located at bases with operational forces.

Nine countries currently have nuclear weapons: the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel. Of these, Russia, with 5,459 warheads, and the United States, with 5,177, have the largest total nuclear inventories.

India is believed to have slightly expanded its nuclear arsenal in 2024 and continues to develop new types of nuclear delivery systems, SIPRI said in its yearbook on Monday.

“India’s new ‘canisterised’ missiles, which can be transported with mated warheads, may be capable of carrying nuclear warheads during peacetime, and possibly even multiple warheads on each missile, once they become operational,” it said.

The organisation made a note of last month’s four-day military conflict between India and Pakistan after the Pahalgam terror attack on April 22.

In this context, Matt Korda, the associate senior researcher with SIPRI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programme, said: “The combination of strikes on nuclear-related military infrastructure and third-party disinformation risked turning a conventional conflict into a nuclear crisis. This should act as a stark warning for states seeking to increase their reliance on nuclear weapons.”

Indian officials, including Chief of Defence Staff Anil Chauhan, have maintained that during the conflict in May, neither side came close to considering the use of nuclear weapons, The Times of India reported.

Nevertheless, Korda remarked: “As the recent flare-up of hostilities in India and Pakistan amply demonstrated, nuclear weapons do not prevent conflict. They also come with immense risks of escalation and catastrophic miscalculation – particularly when disinformation is rife – and may end up making a country’s population less safe, not more.”

The SIPRI report said that China’s nuclear stockpile is growing faster than that of any other country. “By January 2025, China had completed or was close to completing around 350 new ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] silos in three large desert fields in the north of the country and three mountainous areas in the east,” it said.