I think the thing that surprises me the most about the IRA arsenal, which was destroyed in its entirety last week according to retired Canadian general John de Chastelain (who oversaw the weapons destruction), is how few weapons this group had. Only about 750 really nasty rifles and but one (one!) surface to air (SAM) missile, and still they kept an entire crumbling empire on its toes for a couple hundred years or so. Then I got to the line item about Semtex explosives. 3 tonnes!

A little perspective: Semtex is a Czech-made plastic explosive that is odourless and therefore damn hard to detect. Here are some details from a global security, explosives website:

Three pounds of Semtex plastique packs enough punch to raze a two-story building. Terrorists attack with no warning and no rationale. Their weapon of choice is a pliable, odorless substance that is twice as powerful as TNT and is virtually invisible to conventional security devices. It can be hidden in a brief case or a small cassette recorder.

So let me just say—three tonnes less of the damn stuff in the world. Happy day!

Here’s the whole IRA cache, according to the story in the Guardian:

650 Kalashnikov assault rifles

Plus Hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition