Where the superpowers store and produce chemical weapons

The United States has chemical weapons storage depots at nine locations - eight on the mainland, one on Johnston Island in the Pacific. The Pentagon considers 90 percent of the stored weapons (which were produced before 1969) unusable antiques. It plans to incinerate them on site. In July, the US named five locations as chemical weapons production sites, where it is producing a new generation of `binary' weapons.

The Soviet Union is the only nation that has given specific figures on its chemical weapons stockpile, though Western intelligence analysts question their accuracy. But Western estimates of the Soviet threat are themselves piecemeal and widely divergent. One reason is that it is difficult to determine if chemicals manufactured by the large Soviet chemical industry are being siphoned off for arms production.