Pakistan

We are often asked which countries have nuclear weapons, are seeking them, or may seek them in the future. In trying to answer the question, we have had to consider which countries possessed or tried to obtain nuclear weapons in the past. Our findings about both current and historical nuclear weapons programs are outlined on an interactive world map, and summarized in a companion table.

United States United States Sweden France Britain Belgium Netherlands Germany Spain India Japan Switzerland China Italy Russia Israel Australia Egypt Argentina Brazil Romania South Africa South Korea North Korea Taiwan Yugoslavia Algeria Syria Pakistan Iraq Iran Libya Norway Belarus Kazakhstan Ukraine Russia United States Canada

Pakistan has a program which began after 1970 and is still ongoing.  In February 2004, AQ Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb, admitted to supplying nuclear technology to North Korea, Iran and Libya through a nuclear black market.

Military Stocks of Fissile Material, end of 2003 (in kilograms)1,2
Unirradiated Plutonium40 (20-60)3
Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU)1,100 (1,000-1,250)
Number of Weapons55-90


Learn more by reading the ISIS Reports on Pakistan here.

 

1 From Global Fissile Material Inventories, June 2004.

2 These values are updates of the estimates in India’s and Pakistan’s Fissile Material Inventory, end of 1999, by David Albright, October 2000.

3 The values presented are the median and 5th-95th percentiles (in parentheses), calculated using the forecasting software Crystal BallÆ.  This software allows a more systematic and defensible uncertainty analysis.

[Summary Table]