THE increasing states’ reliance on nuclear weapons as instruments of national power and the rapidly eroding support for nuclear arms control in international politics have propelled the modernization of nuclear arsenals. The nine nuclear-armed states—the United States, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and Israel—have been advancing their nuclear arsenals. Nuclear saber-rattling by Indian, Israeli, Russian and American leadership has also contributed to nuclear optimism and narrowed the space of nuclear pessimism in strategic discourse. These developments sustain vertical proliferation and encourage horizontal proliferation internationally.
In the fourth nuclear age, South Asia has emerged as a trend-setting region. The South Asian nuclear-armed states—India and Pakistan—had a war from May 7 to 10, 2025. Though they refrained from using nuclear weapons rhetoric, they set the precedent that nuclear-armed states could have a Nuclear–Conventional Entanglement, i.e., the grey area where the same equipment, especially missiles, is designed to carry nuclear and non-nuclear (conventional) military capabilities. During the May 2025 conflict, India fired a nuclear-capable BrahMos supersonic cruise missile to target the Nur Khan airbase located adjacent to Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division, which is responsible for nuclear planning and General Headquarters (GHQ), which is the primary command post and military headquarters of the Pakistan Army in Rawalpindi. The deployment of BrahMos raised the risk of conflict escalating to nuclear confrontation.
India has been expanding its nuclear stockpile since its nuclear weapons tests in May 1998. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), a Sweden-based think tank, in its recent report found that New Delhi had developed 190 nuclear warheads by January 2026. Last year, SIPRI reported that India had 180 nuclear warheads. However, analysts believe that India’s actual nuclear arsenal is significantly larger than SIPRI’s documents indicate. Moreover, India has been developing new types of nuclear delivery vehicles such as Hypersonic Glide Vehicles and Hypersonic Cruise Missiles.
SIPRI also reported a significant shift in India’s nuclear posture, i.e., India deployed nuclear weapons during peacetime. It reported that “India may now occasionally deploy a small number of warheads mounted on missiles during peacetime.” Pakistan’s Foreign Office spokesperson, Tahir Andrabi, without endorsing SIPRI’s methodology, opined that the institute’s observations did not come as a surprise to Islamabad. India’s increasing nuclear arsenal, placing missiles in canisters and mating warheads with their launchers, is an open secret. For instance, during the post-Pulwama 2019 military standoff, India deployed its nuclear assets at sea. On March 18, 2019, Captain DK Sharma of the Indian Navy announced, “The major combat units of the Indian Navy, including the Carrier Battle Group with INS Vikramaditya, nuclear submarines and scores of other ships, submarines and aircraft swiftly transited from exercise to operational deployment mode as tensions between India and Pakistan escalated.” Ironically, SIPRI’s confirmation about India’s nuclear weapons deployment came nearly seven years later. India’s rising defense budget (spent $92.1 billion on its military in 2025), cyber warfare preparedness, expanding nuclear stockpiles, shifts in nuclear doctrine and shyness to be involved in the regional nuclear risk reduction measures are alarming for the South Asians, especially Pakistan. Despite these developments, Islamabad is intelligently avoiding the arms race trap without compromising on its credible deterrence posture.
Pakistan seems satisfied with its 170 nuclear warheads without peacetime deployments. It reveals that, unlike India, it is not increasing its nuclear warheads. However, it is advancing delivery vehicles, developing, employing and maturing new emerging technologies in the military domain, enhancing cyber warfare potential and introducing structural institutional reforms in the defense forces to perfect and strengthen its multi-domain warfare capability. On August 13, 2025, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced the formation of the Army Rocket Force Command equipped with state-of-the-art technology. The new command is equipped with modern technology and can target the enemy from every direction. Indeed, this force further strengthens Pakistan’s warfighting capabilities. To conclude, the dangers associated with nuclear weapons in South Asia are growing due to modernization and deployment of nuclear weapons by India, fabrication and integration of new technologies in the military systems of South Asian belligerent neighbors and the absence of a dialogue process between India and Pakistan.
—The writer is Vice Chancellor of the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.
