IRA decommissioning will prove to be a serious logistical challenge, writes Tom Clonan.
The Provisional IRA, in its statement yesterday, pledged to "verifiably put its arms beyond use, in a way which will further enhance public confidence, and to conclude this as quickly as possible".
Given the size and dispersed nature of the IRA's arsenal, this task will likely prove to be a logistical challenge which will take at least several weeks to complete.
Over the past four decades the IRA has taken delivery of a considerable number of consignments of weapons.
The main sources of IRA armaments have traditionally been republican sympathisers in the US and other anti-establishment and terrorist sources in eastern Europe, north Africa and the Middle East, including Libya and Lebanon.
A number of notable shipments of arms, including those found on the Marita Ann in 1984 - intercepted by the Irish Naval Service - and on the Eksund in 1987, were seized by international authorities.
These latter shipments, originating in the US and Libya, included thousands of weapons, including automatic pistols, assault rifles and medium and heavy machine guns - capable of bringing down light aircraft and helicopters - along with at least one surface-to-air missile system.
The range of weapons seized, encompassing the full spectrum of arms from assault weapons to light artillery, gives some indication as to the possible full extent of the IRA's weapons inventory.
Given that it is believed that at least three shipments of arms successfully reached the IRA between 1985 and 1987, its inventory of weapons towards the end of the 1980s was significant.
In addition to such weapons, the IRA is believed to possess approximately three tonnes of Semtex and a large quantity of detonators and homemade or improvised weapons such as the "Mark 10" and "Mark 17" mortars.
In total, it is estimated that it possesses approximately 800 assault rifles and machine guns as well as 40 rocket-propelled grenades, similar to the type currently being used in Iraq, along with one surface-to-air missile system and at least three tonnes of military-specification plastic explosives.
Motivated by a desire to deny the police and intelligence services any precise evidence of the extent or whereabouts of its illegal arms dumps, the IRA did not keep a centralised written inventory of its weapons and ammunition.
The locations and contents of most IRA weapons dumps were committed to the memory of local active service units (ASUs) which in turn answered to the IRA's quartermaster. It is believed that the vast majority of these weapons caches - kept small and dispersed - are located in the Republic.
Garda sources, along with some republicans, express the view that not all of these weapons can now be traced. Many have been simply lost as older republican sympathisers died, bringing with them to the grave the secret of their location.
Some ASU members also have difficulty in pinpointing the exact location of weapons hides as a result of the limitations imposed on memory when such weapons were disposed of - often after dark and in stressful circumstances. Indeed, this failure of memory was a tragic feature of recent attempts to locate the bodies of those who were murdered and "disappeared" during the "Troubles".
Other weapons may also have been moved to new locations by dissident republicans, prominent among whom is a former IRA quartermaster.
With all these factors in mind, a significant element of yesterday's statement included the sentence, "All IRA units have been ordered to dump arms". This suggests that the IRA may have begun the process of assembling whatever remains of its dispersed stock of arms to pre-selected centralised sites for the purposes of disposal.
Since the IRA officially ceased its activities at 4pm yesterday, it is likely that this may already have taken place. How, for example, would it look if a supposedly disbanded ASU was intercepted en route to a decommissioning point in the coming days with a carload of AK-47s or Semtex?
The manner in which the weapons will be disposed of remains unclear. The formula of words around their disposal - to verifiably put arms beyond use - does not explicitly imply outright destruction. Rather, it suggests that the weapons will be stripped down to their constituent parts and fouled or compromised in some fashion.
Most experts believe that the weapons will be disassembled and buried in concrete, with firing mechanisms and barrels buried separately. The stocks of Semtex could be disposed of safely by burning - 1kg of Semtex takes approximately 45 seconds to burn.
The IRA statement emphasises that it will conduct this process "in a way which will further enhance confidence". Presumably this means that the decommissioning process will involve not just the IICD and oversight by individuals such as Gen John de Chastelain, but will also include, by invitation, "two independent witnesses from the Protestant and Catholic churches to testify to this".
The immediate test for the decommissioning process will be to expedite this procedure as quickly as possible and in the process obtain the services of two very credible church representatives.
In the absence of photographic evidence of decommissioning and a clear inventory of arms - despite the presence of prominent churchmen - faith in the decommissioning process may yet pose quite a challenge for the more cynical in Irish and British society.