Divulging state secrets...

...again, I view this as a mistake...unless the number is completely false.

The US revealed the size of its nuclear arsenal last night in an unprecedented attempt to galvanise efforts to rid the world of nuclear weapons.

Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, announced the declassification of one of the Pentagon’s most closely guarded secrets at the opening day of a critical international meeting on global disarmament.

The Pentagon’s figures show that the US stockpile consists of 5,113 nuclear warheads and “several thousand” more retired warheads that await dismantling. The figures reveal an 84 per cent reduction from the historic peak of 31,225 warheads in 1967 at the height of the Cold War.

“Beginning today, the United States will make public the number of nuclear weapons in our stockpile and the number of weapons we have dismantled since 1991,” Mrs Clinton told the UN review conference on the Non-Proliferation Treaty. “So for those who doubt that the United States will do its part on disarmament, this is our record, these are our commitments and they send a clear, unmistakable signal.”