SpaceWar.com reports: “Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernise their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, researchers warned Monday.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said nuclear powers including the United States and Russia — which account for around 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year ‘upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions’.

Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads.

But SIPRI warned that the trend was likely to be reversed in the coming years.

‘What we see now, first of all, is that the number of operational nuclear warheads is beginning to increase,’ SIPRI Director Dan Smith told AFP…”