Ronan Kerr was the softest of targets for republican dissidents. Having graduated as a PSNI officer only three weeks ago, he was taking no security precautions despite living in nationalist Omagh.
His car was parked outside the house, not in a garage. There were no CCTV cameras to alert him to the fact that someone had tampered with it. He didn't check underneath as veteran police officers learned to do during the Troubles.
Planting an under-car bomb has always been low-risk for republican paramilitaries. If powerful magnets were used, it would have taken only seconds to attach the device to Kerr's car.
The fact that apart from the area under the driver's seat, the rest of the car remained largely intact indicates that Semtex or a commercial explosive was used which shows the sophisticated methods of the dissident republicans involved.
At the time of writing, no group has claimed responsibility. The splintered nature of militant republicanism today means there are three main possibilities.
The Real IRA, which shot dead two British soldiers at Massereene in 2009, is the deadliest group and the one strongest in Tyrone. However, it's been largely inactive recently. Last year, it carried out only two significant attacks – bombing Newry courthouse and a Derry bank.
Oglaigh na hEireann, a Real IRA splinter group, is currently the most active dissident organisation. It came close to killing Catholic policeman Peadar Heffron who lost a leg in an under-car bomb last year.
Another possibility is a group of independent Tyrone republicans who left the Provisional IRA in recent times, dissatisfied at its political direction. The security forces are extremely worried about these men's expertise and intent. There's an outside chance the Continuity IRA, formed in 1986, was responsible.
Kerr's murder will send shockwaves among young Catholic PSNI recruits, some of whom still are unfortunately under the illusion they can choose such a career without moving home and cutting ties with their own community.
Although Catholics leaving or not joining the PSNI out of fear would be a 'success' for dissidents, they are targeted primarily because they are easier to kill.
Neither the passionate denunciation of Sinn Féin leaders, nor the condemnation of wider Irish society, will affect the dissidents one iota. For decades the Provisional IRA campaign was hugely unpopular in the nationalist community. All the pleas from SDLP and Dublin politicians, and all the massive peace rallies, didn't stop the murders.
The dissidents want to kill British soldiers. But, with most of the 5,000 military in the North confined to barracks, there aren't many opportunities. So PSNI officers remain the top targets.
Two years ago, I stood at an Easter commemoration in Derry attended by hundreds of republicans. A masked Real IRA man in full combat gear stepped forward to address the crowd.
"Let us be clear," he said. "Any young person fool enough to join the colonial police in the belief that the leadership of the Provisional movement will protect them or give them cover is sadly mistaken." Ronan Kerr's horrendous killing was testimony to that.
Unlike Sinn Féin, the dissidents' thinking hasn't changed. The Real IRA man compared the PSNI's Catholic recruits to those in the RIC a century ago: "Some in their ranks portray themselves as Irish. Once you don the uniform of your British pay-master, you become its instrument."
But it's important to put the dissident campaign in context. Two years after the murders at Massereene. and that of PSNI officer Stephen Carroll in Lurgan, this is the first security force fatality. By the Provisionals' standards, it's a poor record.
The dissidents aren't aiming for an intensive campaign. They know they aren't capable of forcing 'Brits out'. Their strategy is hit-and-run sporadic attacks aimed at disrupting normalisation in the North, drawing the security forces into an openly combative role, and aiming – as the Provisionals once did – to destabilise any settlement short of Irish unity.
The overwhelming majority of nationalists reject them but they obviously have enough supporters to provide safe houses and store weapons. And whether we like it or not, 'successful' attacks will gain them recruits in hardline republican areas, particularly at a time of deep recession.
