NEW DELHI, June 10 -- For half a century India kept its bomb in pieces. Warheads in one custody, missiles in another, the arsenal stored as a promise rather than a posture, and the restraint itself presented as doctrine. The new count from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute suggests that era is quietly closing. India's stockpile has grown to an estimated 190 nuclear warheads, ahead of Pakistan's 170 for the first time by such a margin, and a dozen of them, by SIPRI's reckoning, now sit deployed on delivery systems rather than in storage.

The vault is opening.

The institute's Yearbook, released this week, records that India "once again slightly expanded" its arsenal in 2025 and kept developing new delivery systems, with...