'Bombs away' but not too fast: 9 nuke states slow in curbing 16,300 warheads.

Nuclear-armed countries are upping the ante by modernizing their delivery systems and warheads, Swedish researchers have found. The report dampens hopes of modest stockpile reductions.

Amid a steady decline in the number of nuclear warheads in the world over the past five years, the nine nuclear-armed states still possess a total of 16,300 such weapons of mass destruction in early 2014 - down by around 5.6 percent from the previous year, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) revealed in its annual report on Monday.

"Once again this year, the nuclear weapon-possessing states took little action to indicate a genuine willingness to work toward complete dismantlement of their nuclear arsenals," wrote SIPRI researchers Shannon Kile and Phillip Patton Schell.

A large part of the reductions came from Cold War-era foes United States and Russia, which together possess around 93 percent of the world's nuclear weapons.

However, Washington’s insistence on building a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe – just miles from the Russian border, and without Russia’s involvement – threatens to terminate the 2011 New Start treaty, which limits the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550.

http://rt.com/news/166132-nuclear-weapons-report-obama/

Full report here : Nuclear forces reduced while modernizations continue, says SIPRI http://www.sipri.org/media/pressreleases/2014/nuclear_May_2014