According to a report, the world’s nuclear powers are bolstering their arsenals amid rising geopolitical tensions.

Nuclear-armed countries are enhancing their arsenals, and several have prepared new nuclear-armed or nuclear-capable weapon systems amid escalating geopolitical tensions, a new report reveals. The nine nuclear states – the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel – are modernizing their weapons stockpiles. For the first time, China may have deployed “a small number of warheads on missiles during peacetime,” according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) in a report published Monday. “While the global total of nuclear warheads continues to fall as Cold War-era weapons are gradually dismantled, regrettably, we continue to see year-on-year increases in the number of operational nuclear warheads,” said the institute’s director, Dan Smith.