Newly Declassified Data Shows Unexplained Increase In U.S. Nuclear Warhead Stockpile
There had been no increases in the stockpile for over 25 years before this data point was released.
By Thomas Newdick October 7, 2021
The War Zone
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At the latest official public count, the U.S. military possesses a stockpile of 3,750 nuclear warheads, with approximately 2,000 more that have been retired and are awaiting disposal. Under the Trump administration, however, a small but unusual bump in stockpile size occurred between 2018 and 2019, according to these same figures. The unexplained increase in the total number of warheads in inventory is apparently only the second reported instance of its kind since the end of the Cold War.
The revelations are among newly declassified details of nuclear weapons numbers in a recently published fact sheet from the U.S. Department of State with the title Transparency in the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Stockpile. This is the first time such data has been released since September 2017, after which the Trump administration took the decision to classify the information.
As the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) observed in their blog on the topic, the stockpile increased by 20 warheads between September 2018 and September 2019, when Trump was in office.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/42666/newly-declassified-data-shows-unexplained-increase-in-u-s-nuclear-warhead-stockpile
