LONDON (CNN) -- Britain has a total nuclear arsenal of fewer than 225 weapons, with 160 currently operational, Foreign Secretary William Hague said Wednesday.

“We believe that the time is now right to be more open about the weapons we hold,” Hague said in a statement to Parliament. “We judge that this will assist in building a climate of trust between nuclear and non-nuclear weapons states and contribute, therefore, to future efforts to reduce the number of nuclear weapons worldwide.”
The British disclosure follows similar recent announcements by France and the United States, the other nuclear-armed Western allies. Britain had previously disclosed that it had 160 operational warheads, which are based aboard ballistic missile submarines.
The U.S. announced this month that the United States has 5,113 nuclear warheads in its stockpile and “several thousand” more retired warheads awaiting the junk pile.
The Obama administration's announcement was the first accounting of a secretive arsenal born in the Cold War and now shrinking rapidly.
Photo: UK’s Trident is a submarine-launched ballistic nuclear missile designed by Lockheed Martin Space Systems in the U.S.
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