The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) launched its annual nuclear forces data, which highlights the current trends and developments in world nuclear arsenals at the beginning of July. The data shows that while the overall number of nuclear weapons in the world continues to decline, all of the nuclear weapon-possessing states are in the process of modernizing their nuclear arsenals and will not be prepared to give them up for the foreseeable future.

At the start of 2017 nine states—the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea—possessed approximately 4150 operationally deployed nuclear weapons. If all nuclear warheads are counted, these states together possessed a total of approximately 14,935 nuclear weapons, compared with 15,395 in early 2016