The world faces a “third nuclear age”, the head of the Armed Forces has said as he warned that China poses a major threat to the West.

In a speech on Wednesday night, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, Chief of the Defence Staff, said that the nuclear stability achieved in the wake of the Cold War was at an end.

He warned that Russia, China, Iran and North Korea all posed a threat, and highlighted Beijing as a particular challenge for the US.

For decades, the nuclear threat from China was not considered significant, but it is now thought to be expanding its arsenal more quickly than any other country and it is set to be on a par with the US and Russia by 2030.

Adml Sir Tony’s comments came just hours after the veterans’ minister said that the British Army would be destroyed in “six months to a year” if it had to fight Russia.

Speaking at the Royal United Services Institute’s annual Chief of the Defence Staff lecture, Adml Sir Tony said that the world was “at the dawn of a third nuclear age”.