But the risk, both current US officials and defense analysts say, is that in the long term, some of those weapons may wind up in the hands of other militaries and militias that the US did not intend to arm.

„We have fidelity for a short time, but when it enters the fog of war, we have almost zero,“ said one source briefed on US intelligence. „It drops into a big black hole, and you have almost no sense of it at all after a short period of time.“