Sourced : Military Times
By: Shawn Snow
The Defense Department’s fiscal 2018 budget request continues the program of training and equipping vetted Syrian partners in the fight against ISIS, and the proposal includes funds for U.S. AT-4 anti-tank rockets or Russian SPG-9 recoilless rifles, and several thousand RPG-7s, a move likely to irk U.S. NATO ally Turkey.
The budget request provides a small window into the Trump administration’s secretive strategy to defeat ISIS. Defense officials have been reluctant to divulge information on the overall strategy for post-ISIS Iraq and Syria, but the document offers a glimpse into areas the administration views as the primary points of concern not only for taking the fight to ISIS in Syria, but also rebuilding combat power in Iraq to fight a potential post-ISIS insurgency in that country.
The Pentagon has been tight-lipped about the specifics of the equipment it plans to provide to its Kurdish allies. Those concerns likely stem from Ankara’s disapproval of U.S. plans to equip members of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG — a group Turkey insists is the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party, an internationally designated terrorist group.
“The equipment includes small arms, ammunition, heavy machine guns and weapons capable of defeating specific threats that forces are expected to encounter as they take the fight to the enemy, such as heavily armored vehicle-borne IEDs,” said Eric Pahon, a spokesperson for the Pentagon. He declined to provide any further specifics on weapon types.
Read more at : http://www.militarytimes.com/articles/anti-tank-ypg-isis-turkey