Trump Sons' Drone Company Seeks Pentagon Contracts

On March 9, 2026, a Nasdaq-listed golf course operator in Florida announced it would merge with a drone startup backed by President Donald Trump's two eldest sons. The deal — which would transform Aureus Greenway Holdings into a company called Powerus Corporation — might have passed as just another unremarkable reverse merger, except for one detail: the Pentagon is preparing to spend billions of dollars on exactly the kinds of drones Powerus wants to build, and the president's sons are positioned to benefit [1][2].

The Powerus announcement is not an isolated investment. It is the latest in a rapidly expanding portfolio of defense-sector bets by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump that spans at least four companies, multiple Pentagon programs, and more than $735 million in government contracts already awarded to firms linked to their investment vehicles [3][4].

The Powerus Deal: From Golf Courses to Combat Drones

Powerus, a West Palm Beach-based company founded in 2025 by Andrew Fox, builds autonomous drone systems through three wholly-owned subsidiaries: Kaizen Aerospace (heavy-lift UAVs capable of 500-pound-plus payloads), Tandem Defense (tactical defense platforms), and Agile Autonomy (maritime surveillance systems) [5][6].

The company's founding team includes former U.S. Army Special Operations veterans, though Fox himself spent nearly three decades running a building services company in New York with no prior drone experience [7]. Under the merger terms, Powerus will become a publicly traded company on Nasdaq under the ticker "PUSA," with an initial private placement of approximately $9 million. A Seoul-based private equity firm, the Korea Climate & Governance Improvement Fund, committed an additional $50 million [6][8].

Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. are invested through American Ventures, one of the family's investment vehicles. The company describes both as "notable investors" [1][9].

Fox has publicly stated that Powerus targets producing more than 10,000 drones per month once it secures public capital. Industry analysts have questioned this figure. DroneXL noted that the entire U.S. drone industry currently produces an estimated 100,000 drones per year — roughly 8,300 per month across all manufacturers combined — meaning Powerus alone would need to exceed the output of the entire domestic industry [7].

A Web of Defense Investments

Powerus is just one thread in a broader tapestry. The Trump sons have systematically positioned themselves across the rapidly growing U.S. drone and defense sector:

Unusual Machines — Donald Trump Jr. joined the advisory board of this Florida-based drone-parts maker in November 2024, shortly after his father won the presidential election, bringing a roughly $4 million stake (331,580 shares). In October 2025, Unusual Machines secured a U.S. Army contract for 3,500 drone motors, with Pentagon indications of an additional 20,000 component orders in 2026 [10][11].

Xtend — Eric Trump invested in this Israeli drone maker, which develops AI-powered autonomous systems used by Israel's military in Gaza. Xtend announced plans to go public through a $1.5 billion reverse merger with U.S.-listed JFB Construction Holdings. Notably, Xtend secured an $8.8 million Pentagon contract in December 2024 — before Trump's second term — and has since been selected for the Department of Defense's Drone Dominance Program [12][13].

1789 Capital — Donald Trump Jr. joined as a partner in this venture capital fund, which has invested in defense companies including Anduril Industries and Hadrian. According to a Financial Times analysis, at least four of 1789 Capital's portfolio companies won contracts from the Trump administration totaling more than $735 million, including a record $620 million Pentagon loan to Vulcan Elements, a rare-earth magnets startup with just 30 employees [3][14].

Source: Bloomberg / Financial Times / TechCrunch

Data as of Mar 12, 2026CSV

The Pentagon's Drone Spending Boom

The Trump family's investments arrive against a backdrop of unprecedented military spending on unmanned systems. In December 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth unveiled the "Drone Dominance Program," which aims to purchase over 200,000 industry-made drones by 2027 through $1.1 billion in fixed-price orders across four phases [15][16].

In February 2026, the Pentagon named 25 vendors to compete in the program's first phase — known as "the Gauntlet" — at Fort Benning, Georgia. As of early March, the Pentagon was preparing to order 30,000 one-way attack drones from winning vendors, to be delivered within five months [17][18].

This builds on the Biden-era Replicator initiative, which allocated $1 billion across fiscal years 2024 and 2025, though it fell short of its goals, producing only "hundreds" rather than "thousands" of systems by its August 2025 target [19].

The FY2026 defense budget request reflects this escalation dramatically: $9.4 billion was requested for UAV procurement alone, up from an estimated $5.7 billion in FY2025 and $3.8 billion in FY2024. A dedicated "smart warfare" budget line of $13.4 billion includes unmanned systems across air, sea, and land domains [20].

Source: DefenseScoop / DoD FY2026 Budget Request

Data as of Mar 12, 2026CSV

The China Ban: Policy That Creates Opportunity

A critical policy lever underpinning this boom is the Trump administration's ban on foreign-made drones. In June 2025, President Trump signed the "Unleashing American Drone Dominance" executive order, directing federal agencies to support domestic drone manufacturing and eliminate foreign drone technology from government use [21].

The Federal Communications Commission subsequently banned the import and sale of all new drone models from foreign manufacturers — including DJI, the Chinese company that dominates the global civilian drone market — by adding them to its "Covered List" of entities posing security risks. This followed the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, which mandated a security review of DJI equipment by December 2025, with automatic FCC blacklisting if the review was not completed [22][23].

The ban effectively created a domestic vacuum that companies like Powerus, Unusual Machines, and Xtend are now rushing to fill — companies in which the president's sons are invested.

"It's the equivalent of a president banning foreign cars and then his sons investing in a domestic car company," said one government ethics expert quoted by CNN [4].

The Ethics Questions

The convergence of family investment, presidential policy, and Pentagon procurement has drawn scrutiny from ethics watchdogs and Democratic lawmakers.

In January 2026, Senators Elizabeth Warren, Richard Blumenthal, and Andy Kim wrote to the Department of Defense expressing concern about "the potential for Donald Trump Jr.-linked companies to profit off Department of Defense contract awards and loans" [14].

Four government ethics experts told CNN that 1789 Capital's business structure constitutes a potential conflict of interest, because Donald Trump Jr. is both a partner in the fund and the son of a sitting president whose administration controls defense spending [4].

The pattern is consistent: the president enacts policies — banning Chinese drones, ramping up domestic drone procurement — that directly create market opportunities for companies in which his sons hold financial stakes. While the White House has maintained that the president is not involved in his sons' business decisions, and the companies have said Trump Jr. and Eric Trump played no role in securing government contracts, critics argue the structural conflict is impossible to disentangle from the appearance of favoritism [3][10].

"Everyone who is making those decisions is certainly aware of who is involved in those companies. So it is hard to trust the integrity of those decisions," one ethics expert told ABC News [9].

The Trump family has rejected these characterizations. Eric Trump has publicly touted the drone investments as patriotic support for domestic manufacturing. Vulcan Elements CEO John Maslin told reporters he had "never met Donald Trump Jr." [14][25].

Source: GDELT Project

Data as of Mar 12, 2026CSV

Skepticism About Powerus

Beyond the ethics debate, industry observers have raised substantive questions about Powerus itself. DroneXL, a leading drone industry publication, published a detailed analysis questioning the company's production claims, noting that its $9 million private placement is "a modest sum for the scale being claimed" relative to a goal of 10,000 drones per month [7].

The publication also noted the unusual nature of the merger vehicle: Aureus Greenway Holdings operates golf courses in Florida, specifically the Kissimmee Bay Country Club and Remington Golf Club near Orlando. The company announced that following the merger, these properties would "continue operations and may serve as proving grounds for Powerus precision agriculture drone systems" [6][8].

The company's stock surged 15% in premarket trading on the day of the announcement, driven largely by the Trump name association [8].

Powerus has also drawn attention for its stated plans to integrate Ukrainian drone technologies for the Pentagon — a detail that adds geopolitical complexity given the ongoing U.S. relationship with Ukraine and Russia [24].

The Broader Landscape

The Trump sons' moves reflect a larger trend in defense entrepreneurship. The U.S. military drone market reached $6.5 billion in 2025 and is projected to grow to over $10 billion by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate of roughly 13% [26]. The shift from a few large defense primes (General Atomics, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin) to a more distributed ecosystem of smaller drone startups has created entry points for new players — and new investors.

Ukraine's war with Russia has been the primary catalyst. Ukraine deploys an estimated 9,000 drones daily, demonstrating that cheap, mass-produced unmanned systems can alter the battlefield calculus against a conventional military power [7]. The Pentagon's Drone Dominance Program is an explicit response to this lesson.

But the question of who profits from this transformation, and whether the president's family should be among them, remains unresolved. There are no laws specifically prohibiting a president's adult children from investing in companies that do business with the federal government. The Trump Organization's decision to forgo a formal blind trust — as previous presidential families have done — means the investments operate in a gray zone of ethics and optics.

What Comes Next

The Powerus-Aureus merger is expected to close in summer 2026. Xtend's Nasdaq listing through JFB Construction is projected for mid-2026. And the Pentagon's Drone Dominance Program will continue awarding contracts throughout the year.

Each new contract awarded to a Trump-linked firm will intensify the debate. Each new investment will raise fresh questions. And as the U.S. military pivots toward a drone-centric future measured in hundreds of thousands of autonomous systems, the Trump family's financial positioning in that future will remain one of the most closely watched intersections of political power and private profit in modern American governance.