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The data were disclosed by President Joe Biden’s State Department Department on Tuesday. This disclosure reverses the policy of the Donald Trump administration which chose to keep the number of America’s nuclear weapons secret.
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According to the US State Department, the disclosure will help global efforts to control the spread of nuclear weapons or what is often dubbed the “weapon of the apocalypse”.
The department said the 3,750 nuclear warheads were active and inactive in the arsenal as of September 2020. This number was down from 3,805 in 2019 and 3,785 in 2018.
In 2003, the total US nuclear arsenal was over 10,000 units. The numbers peaked in 1967 at 31,255 units.
The last time the US government released its stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction was in March 2018, when it was announced the total was 3,822 as of September 2017.
The March 2018 announcement was the start of the Trump administration, which later kept the latest figures secret and rejected a request by the Federation of American Scientists to declassify it.
“Back to transparency,” said Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists. AP, Thursday (7/10/2021).
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