How many nuclear weapons do you think India has? Most of you would say 130 maybe 150. I mean that’s what the media says. Every media outlet says that India has about 120 nuclear weapons. And this is a story we have been hearing for more than a decade. Only 120, and the Pakistanis have 130. So India is inferior to Pakistan in the nuclear weapons count apparently. And that’s what the western media says as well. It’s also what the Indian media keeps parroting.
So they say that India has 150 Nukes, Pakistan has 165, the British have 225 French have 290, the Chinese have 350, and so on and so forth. So India is at the bottom of the table. If we don’t count, Israel, Israel may have 90 but that’s obviously not very well known.
So if you ask anyone and If you tweet on Twitter, lots of people will come and tell you, “what are you talking about India has this many Nuclear Weapons, only 120”. So how many nukes does India really have? That’s what I would like to address. And how do we figure out how many nuclear weapons India really has? Well, let me show you some rather obscure documents, shall I?
All right, let’s go there. So this is a report by an American think tank or organization, it’s called the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. And this document is testimony before the U. S. Economic and Security Review Commission. And this is an old document. It’s from 26 March 2012. And the title of the document is about China’s nukes and fissile materials holdings.
So it’s mainly about china but they also mentioned India in passing over here. So let’s go to page 3.
It says “There is India”
As you can see, it talks about India. and it states here,
So this document refers to India having enough fissile material For 1000 nuclear weapons. This is from 2012. So, this report is a decade old. It says India has approximately enough fissile material for 1000 nuclear weapons.
Let’s take a look at something else.
From a Pakistani newspaper, Dawn, which is quite famous and very well known. An article from 2015. which states in its 3rd paragraph that:-
So, the Pakistani estimate is twice Of the estimate from 2012 which was from the US. So in three years’ time, the estimate has doubled.
Now let’s take a look at a more detailed document.
This is a document from 2017. It’s a discussion paper from the Harvard Kennedy school’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs which is a very well-known think tank. So this is a very detailed document. 66 pages. Let’s go to page 60. So this is a table of Indian and Pakistani fissile material weapon equivalent potential. So let’s talk about what it says about India.
So the weapons potential based on these, based on this data is that India has enough fissile material Four between 2061- 2686 nuclear weapons. Whereas the total Pakistani potential is 207 nuclear weapons.
So this, my friends give you a more accurate estimate Of the nuclear weapons potential that India has. It doesn’t mean that India has 2000 nuclear weapons. It means India has enough fissile material plutonium and uranium to build Up to 2686 Nuclear weapons.
This is from 2017. We have nuclear reactors. We generate more fissile material. So if the trend continues like this, we would certainly have more than enough fissile material today in 2022 for more than 3000 nuclear weapons. Obviously, we will not convert all of that fissile material into nuclear warheads. It’s pointless to have so many. But we would certainly have more than 120, don’t you think?
You would certainly be able to match whatever China’s nuclear warhead count would be? Of course, they have not made it public. But we can have a few have a reasonably accurate guesstimate as to how many nuclear weapons they would have. The West keeps on saying they (China) have 315 nuclear weapons. I would say it would be at least 500. If not 1000 maybe they don’t need to have that many. But certainly, 500 would be the minimum that the Chinese would have. And if India has enough fissile material for 3000 nuclear warheads, I would expect India would also have about 500 or so warheads as of today. So all of this fissile material cannot be used for warrants. We need it for other purposes. We need it for reactors. We need it for nuclear submarines, the fuel for that, and so on, and so forth. But we have more than sufficient fissile material for a lot of nuclear warheads. So that is just to put things into the correct perspective.
Whatever you’re seeing from the media, I don’t think it’s from the Indian media. I don’t think it’s deliberate misinformation. They just don’t know where to look. They have no idea of what’s really happening. They just blindly copy whatever the West is saying. Oh the BBC said India has 120 so it must be 120. That’s the gospel truth because the BBC said it or the CNN said it or the Washington Post said it. Our media is a blind copycat. They don’t do any real research of their own, they don’t know where to look. They don’t know how to do just research.
So that’s just how it is. I just showed you three different reports and I’m sure we can dig up many more. There are maybe more recent but the more recent ones would be classified. They would not be available in the public domain.
So that’s where India stands. India has way more nuclear fissile material than just enough for 120 nuclear warheads. We have way more than that. So from that front India is well covered. Our nuclear deterrent is strong. We can deal with any potential aggressor. The only thing is to develop a proper nuclear triad which means to be able to deliver nuclear weapons in three different ways, land, air, and the sea. India have I think now complete completed the triad because we have nuclear submarines that can remain submerged for a very long time. We are developing newer nuclear submarines that would have enhanced capabilities, so we are doing well on that front as well.