CNN: U.S. Air Drops 50 Tons of Ammo to the Syrian Rebels

“This is really just the first step in this sort of urgent overhaul of the U.S. effort to equip the Syrian rebels that are fighting ISIS, especially in northern and eastern Syria. Overnight, we got word that four C-17 aircraft, U.S. Air Force, moved into the skies over that area of Syria, backed up by fighter escorts in the sky, and air dropped 50 tons of ammunition to the rebels and more than 100 pallets hitting the ground. The word is that the rebels were able to recover everything dropped. This is ammunition, hand grenades, small arms types of things that these rebel groups desperately had needed for weeks. They had said they were running out of ammunition. The U.S. was deciding whether it wanted to support them in this way. And last week, President Obama approved the plan. So expect to see more of this. This is a coalition of about 5,000 Arab tribes, militias, along with some Kurdish groups up in this region, that have been having a lot of success, the U.S. believes, in battling ISIS. They needed ammunition. They needed some supplies. And this, the U.S. feels, will be a major effort to try and get them to have even more success against ISIS.”