There are substantially fewer nuclear weapons today than at the height of the Cold War. Yet the overall risks of nuclear war – by design, accident, rogue launch or system error – have grown in the second nuclear age. That’s because more countries with fragile command-and-control systems possess these deadly weapons. Terrorists want them, and they are vulnerable to human error, system malfunction and cyberattack.

India’s first nuclear ballistic-missile submarine, INS Arihant, completed its first deterrence patrol last week, marking India’s acquisition of land-, air- and sea-based nuclear weapons.

The Indian navy secretly test-fired its first indigenous nuclear-capable submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) from INS Arihant in the Bay of Bengal on August 11/12.