U.S. Nuclear Weapons Spending Compared to China and Russia

Last year, the world's nine nuclear-armed states—the U.S., Russia, Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea—spent $82.4 billion collectively on their nuclear arsenals, a new report by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) has revealed.

That's an inflation-adjusted increase of approximately $6.5 billion from the previous year, where these countries had collectively spent $76 billion on their nuclear arsenal, according to ICAN.

This increase in spending shows that despite a general ongoing trend of declining nuclear inventories, the nuclear-armed states have continued to invest in modernizing and improving their nuclear arsenals, as well as funding companies and think tanks writing about nuclear policies to support these huge spending budgets.

The U.S. tops the ICAN's list of nuclear spending for 2021, with $44.2 billion spent on its nuclear weapons.

China follows in second, but is much further behind in actual numbers, with $11.7 billion spent on its developing nuclear arsenal. It should be noted that there are no reliable public information records on what Beijing is spending on nuclear weapons, and the ICAN's assessment is based on previous estimates which calculated China's nuclear spending to be about four percent of its total military budget.

Russia is third with $8.6 billion, a sum estimated on the basis of a 2018 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's (SIPRI) report which found that Russian nuclear weapons system spending was about 13 percent of the total defence expenditures in recent years, based on data collected between 2010 and 2016.

Last year, Russia is estimated to have spent $65.9 billion on military spending.

Britain is fourth on the list with $6.8 billion spending on its nuclear weapons, followed by France with $5.9 billion, India with $2.3 billion, Israel with $1.2 billion, Pakistan with $1.1 billion, and finally North Korea with $642 million.

The Geneva-based global civil society coalition estimates that the U.S. has 5,428 nuclear weapons which it can launch from land-based facilities, submarines and planes, whereas China has 350 and Russia has slightly more than the U.S., at 5,977.

The U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration
(NNSA) spent $15.3 billion in 2021 on weapons activities, says ICAN.

In the same year, the Department of Defense requested $28.9 billion for
"Nuclear Modernization," including the "Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent,
B-21 Bomber, Long Range Stand Off Weapon, Columbia class submarine,
missile warning" and "$7 billion for Nuclear Command, Control, and
Communications."

The total of these two expenses makes for about six percent of the total U.S. military spending in last year.

This increased in nuclear spending by the nine nuclear-armed countries reflects the finding of a new report published by SIPRI, which found that risk of nuclear conflict was at its highest since the Cold War. SIPRI expects the global nuclear arsenal to grow in the coming decade.

This conclusion worries ICAN, a Geneva-based group, which actively campaigns for the respect and full implementation of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons adopted on July 2017 by the United Nations and entered into force on January 22, 2021.

"This report shows that nuclear weapons don't work. Nuclear-armed states increased spending by $6.5 billion in 2021 and couldn't prevent a nuclear-armed aggressor from starting a war in Europe," said Alicia Sanders-Zakre, Policy and Research Coordinator at ICAN.

"This is why we need multilateral disarmament more than ever. The first meeting of states parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Vienna 21-23 June could not come at a better time."

In two weeks, countries will gather in Vienna for the international summit on nuclear weapons since Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The meeting is widely expected to adopt a joint declaration and concrete commitments for states parties to implement the treaty.