Reclassified: The US is no longer disclosing the size of its nuclear stockpile

In May of 2010, the Obama administration lifted the veil of secrecy over America’s stockpile of nuclear weapons dating back to the Manhattan project, replacing the educated guesses and conjecture of experts with a real number of warheads: 5,113. The revelation confirmed the suspicions of many experts, and showed the U.S. was maintaining far fewer nuclear weapons than it had been at its peak in 1967, when the total tally was over 31,000.

That practice of disclosing the total number of nuclear weapons in America’s stockpile continued last year, with the Trump administration acknowledging that Uncle Sam now kept only 3,822, showing a reduction of 196 warheads over the year prior. As far as anyone knew, this level of transparency, which had become commonplace since 2009, would continue unabated – that is, until a scientific group requested a 2018 total from the Department of Energy (DOE).