[matthewaveryusa]

What’s also bonkers is our political whimpiness that allowed this to happen, right? If there is a drone response it’s pretty damning evidence that we are way too dovish in our policy against drug smuggling up until now

[ben_w]

It doesn't say much either way.

I'm from the UK, we had the ("real") IRA put a RPG-22 anti-tank rocket at the walls of MI6 HQ (the UK version of the CIA): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_MI6_attack

Dangerous things like these are not expensive, compared to even low budget small-time group.

[gsck]

I mean the RIRA is a splinter group of the PIRA which had massive funding from overseas, especially from the United States. PIRA was not a small-time group.

[ben_w]

I definitely phrased my comment badly; but to your point, it depends on the era. Here's the House of Commons estimate in 2002, I don't know how different it would have been in 2000: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200102/cmselect/cmni...

(Table 1): RIRA Estimated running costs (per year) "£500,00", Estimated fundraising capacity (per year) "£5 million".

I'm assuming that's a typo missing a zero (i.e. should be half a million), not a typo substituting comma for decimal (i.e. five hundred quid). Even with 24 years of inflation, that spend does not suggest a big group to me.