Powerus, a US defense company with ties to President Donald Trump’s sons, drew scrutiny after signing a memorandum of understanding this month with the Pakistani Army and offering Islamabad access to Ukrainian drone technology, sparking debate over the deal’s potential impact on India and wider regional security.
Powerus was founded in October 2025 by veterans of US intelligence and special forces under the name Autonomus Power Corporation. In March, it announced a merger with Aureus Greenway Holdings, to be completed under the Powerus company name in October.
Aureus Greenway is hardly a fixture of the US military-industrial complex and is better known for owning golf resorts. The partnership looks odd at first blush until considering Powerus’s investors. They include American Ventures, a fund owned by the Trump family, and Unusual Machines, a company in which Donald Trump Jr. is an adviser and shareholder.
Within six months, Powerus had acquired three small firms and begun producing unmanned aerial and maritime systems. At the same time, Powerus signed a deal with G1 Exploration to commercialize autonomous defense systems developed in Ukraine.
G1 Exploration holds the intellectual property for seven fully developed drone models from Ukrainian manufacturers, along with several systems still in development. Working together, the two companies launched the Guardian line of interceptor drones.
This summer, Powerus won several contracts despite competition from far larger rivals, including Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and Boeing, which have much greater market capitalization, bigger shares of the unmanned-systems market and more lobbying muscle.
Powerus, doing business on behalf of Autonomous Power Corporation’s fully-owned subsidiary Tandem Defense LLC, won a US Air Force contract worth US$90 million to supply 3,000 interceptor drones. In August, Powerus also won a US Defense Department contract worth $2.5 million for 1,500 first-person-view drones, control kits and spare parts.
Another notable Powerus deal is a $22.3 million contract, on behalf of the Trump-led US government, to build a system protecting critical oil and gas infrastructure in the Middle East. Under the two-year agreement, Powerus will supply software and hardware to establish and maintain an air-threat monitoring network against Iranian attacks.
The company later announced a production line for Guardian interceptors in an undisclosed Gulf Cooperation Council country. The deal’s press release said the Guardian is “built to defeat one-way attack drones and other low-cost aerial threats” and “regional manufacturing places production capacity closer to the customers who need it, shortening delivery timelines compared with shipping finished systems from the United States.”
Powerus has also begun re-exporting Ukrainian drone technology to the Indian subcontinent. It first struck a deal with Mumbai-based Paras Defense and Space Technologies to produce and sell Guardian-1 technology in India.
Then, on September 16, it signed the memorandum with the Pakistani Army, represented by Field Marshal Asim Munir, who is known to have close personal ties to President Trump.
The deal has drawn criticism over potential conflicts of interest and raised concerns about regional security, particularly because Islamabad has been expanding its drone capabilities by adopting Ukrainian tactics and technology after its clash with India during Operation Sindoor.
Brett Velicovich, Powerus’s co-founder, said the agreement calls for an initial order of unmanned aerial vehicles, though exact details have not been disclosed. He added that the company’s ultimate goal is a joint technology partnership and manufacturing operations in Pakistan. Powerus CEO Andrew Fox added Pakistan’s private defense sector is still in its early stages of development but of interest to American firms.
The statements raise questions about a possible revival of US-Pakistani defense cooperation. Washington has largely stopped supplying Islamabad with weapons, offering only modernization packages for previously delivered F-16 fighter jets, but the Powerus deal worries rivals such as India.
After the Operation Sindoor clashes, Pakistan moved to build up its military drone capabilities. It encouraged private companies to manufacture drones, aiming for a network of small, decentralized production sites nationwide.
Police adopted anti-drone nets to protect facilities while the government developed counter-drone systems. Islamabad also courted foreign involvement through private and public-private partnerships.
Ukraine’s war with Russia has spurred its defense industry, and Kyiv is now exporting its battlefield experience to bolster its political influence and economy, striking numerous drone deals with allies and neutral countries alike.
Rising tensions among states and a desire for military advantage drive demand. But such deals do not always weigh the geopolitical consequences, including the re-export of expertise, which can quickly tilt long-standing regional security balances and deepen instability.
The Powerus deal has fueled concern that US defense companies tied to the Trump family, too, are abandoning neutrality and careful risk assessment in a rush to capitalize on surging military drone demand.
