Pitiful? No, an air-drop mission like that would be murderous, criminal. I would not order it or allow it. A mob of people in the drop zone can't move quickly enough to get out from under the pallets.
I have experience with air-drop missions in Vietnam. We air-dropped supplies on pallets into Special Forces camps under seige, but the defenders were in deep foxholes so they couldn't get hit by the pallets.
and given the clear thought and reason that seems to be the mindset of these crowds, any airdrop would probably result in a mass stampede, then the "loot" would be seized by the punks with the guns....
still, we could in theory be doing it better, but i'll be dammed if i can figure it out here in front of my keyboard
"Pitiful? No, an air-drop mission like that would be murderous, criminal."
Memory failing, but I seem to vaguely remember some kind of minor flap during the Afghanistan War, about "Bombing Civilians with MRE's"
Also (really digging, now -- this may be hallucination.) something about people getting clobbered by airdropped frozen chickens, maybe in Kosovo, or maybe in some other disaster area around that time.
Ya can't win, no matter what ya do..
(Please excuse the semi-senile rambling) ;)