Pakistan’s drone deal with a Trump-backed firm exposes an Israeli connection

A US drone company with Israeli military and charity ties has won a limited Pakistani defense order. Its undisclosed terms leave Rawalpindi with its own questions.

30.09.2026

By Anis Raiss

Source:https://thecradle.co/articles/pakistans-drone-deal-with-a-trump-backed-firm-exposes-an-israeli-connection

On 16 September, a US drone company formed less than a year earlier walked into Pakistan's army headquarters in Rawalpindi and met Field Marshal Asim Munir. The next day it announced a memorandum with the army and a limited procurement order from the Ministry of Defense. Two weeks later, neither the ministry nor the army has publicly explained the terms of the purchase, the systems involved, or the price.

The company is called Powerus. US President Donald Trump’s sons stand to gain a stake when it merges with a Florida golf-course operator. Its founders include a former Israeli military intelligence officer and two figures from a charity that has supplied drones to Israeli forces.

One of its advisors called for US troops to seize Iran’s Kharg Island. Now Powerus has secured an order from Pakistan’s Defense Ministry and signed a memorandum with its army, even as Pakistani passports remain invalid for travel to Israel.

Pakistan's language on Israel has always sounded firm. Its foreign minister reaffirmed that position to Washington in May. The paperwork behind the Powerus deal, however, reveals a supply chain that brings Israeli-linked personnel and interests into the orbit of Pakistan's armed forces, even though no evidence shows Israeli components in the drones on offer.

What Rawalpindi signed

Pakistan is a country of more than 250 million people with nuclear weapons, a border with Iran, a border with India, and an army that has ruled it directly for roughly half its existence and wielded enormous influence beyond those years.

The elected government in Islamabad handles the budget and the speeches. The army, from its headquarters in Rawalpindi, holds decisive power over security policy. The Cradle described the arrangement in May as a political order “bent under the weight of the military's ambitions,” with the country's most popular politician, Imran Khan, in jail and the army steering elections toward its preferred bloc. The Financial Times (FT) calls Munir Pakistan's “de facto leader.”

Munir’s rank has only one precedent in Pakistan. Ayub Khan seized power in 1958 and made himself field marshal the following year. Munir became the country’s second in May 2025, after the four-day war with India. Trump has since called him his “favorite field marshal.”

The November 2025 constitutional amendment made Munir chief of defense forces, placed the navy and air force under his command, and extended his term to 2030. In Al Jazeera’s reading, it also allows him to “retain rank, privileges and remain in uniform for life,” with lifetime immunity from prosecution.

Removing him requires a two-thirds vote in parliament, notes Chatham House; removing a prime minister takes a simple majority. FT calls him Pakistan’s “most powerful military leader in decades.”

Munir received Powerus on 16 September. The Florida drone maker told Reuters it had signed “a very important MoU” and received “an initial order for power systems,” in the words of co-founder Brett Velicovich, who declined to identify the systems or the price.

The company described the purchase more narrowly as a “limited procurement order” for unmanned aerial systems and associated support. The separate memorandum is a framework for possible future cooperation, which Powerus itself calls “not a definitive agreement” and says creates no obligation to buy additional products.

The firm commitment is smaller than the handshake at GHQ. Powerus signed a memorandum with Munir and the army that could lead to “joint ventures to localize manufacturing” in Pakistan. The memorandum itself creates no further purchase obligation.

The limited order, however, came from the Ministry of Defense. Bilal Khan of the defense analysis firm Quwa told Al Jazeera that the arrangement was “not generally in line with how the procurement heads of the tri-services typically operate.”

Pakistan’s military media wing, Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), described the meeting as a discussion of “procurement, production and long-term capacity building,” without mentioning the memorandum or the order. The company has disclosed neither the price nor the systems Pakistan agreed to buy.

The army, Foreign Office and Information Ministry did not respond to Al Jazeera’s questions. A retired Pakistani lieutenant general told the outlet that a firm “less than a year old, not yet listed and without a delivery record would not usually clear these checks” for a strategic defense partnership. The memorandum, he suggested, may be “political signaling rather than a procurement decision.”

Imtiaz Gul, executive director of the Islamabad-based Center for Research and Security Studies, tells The Cradle that Pakistan's forces might like American interceptors, but they already have similar systems from China and Turkiye, and two things stand in the way:

“Funding in the first place in times of capital crunch; secondly, the Pakistani establishment would generally not trust US firms which mostly work in tandem with the DC administration.”

Even past those, he adds, the west would be unlikely to clear sales to a country that “heavily relies on China for defense equipment.”

“It seems that the MoU with Powerus is more of a symbolic nature – a means to keep communication between Pakistan and the US power corridors open and intact.”

The golf-course route to Wall Street

Powerus, legally Autonomous Power Corporation, was formed in Delaware in October 2025. It has no long independent manufacturing history, and its shares are not separately listed. Its route to Wall Street runs through Aureus Greenway Holdings, a Nasdaq firm whose business is two golf courses outside Orlando.

Aureus changed its ticker to PUSA in May in anticipation of the merger, but the latest filing still describes that transaction as pending. Investors buying PUSA today hold shares in the golf-course operator, with a proposed claim on the drone business if the merger closes.

Founder and chief executive Andrew Fox spent nearly three decades running a facilities management company in New York and, by the Wall Street Journal's (WSJ) account, had no previous background in drones. Asked why a golf company should become a defense contractor, he answered that the drone market “is certainly going to grow faster than, say, golf courses are.”

Fox resigned as chief executive of Charge Enterprises in August 2023, and the company filed for bankruptcy in Delaware the following year. About three years after that resignation, his new company won a US Air Force contract with a ceiling of up to $90 million.

The money behind the merger runs through two doors. Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. each own roughly six percent of Dominari Holdings, the investment bank involved in the deal, Reuters reported. Through an investment vehicle called American Ventures, the brothers are expected to hold an indirect stake in the combined company; filings put the vehicle's expected beneficial stake at 9.9 percent.

Senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal have written to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth about potential conflicts of interest in Trump Jr.'s defense investments. A spokesman for Trump Jr. said he is a passive investor with no role in the Pakistan deal or Powerus's operations. The White House said: “There are no conflicts of interest.”

The charity and the drone supply line

The founding team brings another connection into view. Powerus lists Ziv Marom as co-founder and chief vision officer. On his own website, Marom writes that he “began his career in the Israel Defense Forces Intelligence Corps” before founding Kaizen Aerospace, the heavy-lift drone firm Powerus absorbed in January.

Vice president for mergers Justin Gans previously worked for Elbit Systems of America, the US arm of an Israeli arms maker.

Then there is the charity. Co-founder Michael Sinensky is president, and founding executive Amy Bove is treasurer, of the Worldwide Friends Foundation, which operates Israel Friends as one of its missions. Its 2024 tax return, filed with the IRS in November 2025, reports revenue of $39.9 million and expenses of $35.8 million.

Three programs accounted for approximately $33.4 million in spending, including $21.8 million for a technology program described as purchases of “commercial drones, commercial cameras, generators, flashlights, phones, etc.” The filing does not establish that all of that spending went to Israel: the foundation also operates a Ukraine mission.

The tax form's labels are broad. Israel Friends' public materials are more specific about its work with Israeli forces. The organization describes support for Israel's defenders and says it has supplied drones, surveillance systems, protective gear, and medical equipment.

Independent reporting has also documented its partnership with an Israeli military drone academy for non-combat reconnaissance systems. The return discloses a business relationship involving Sinensky and Bove and a for-profit company, WeShield, which sold goods to the foundation.

The Trump brothers have another drone investment with an Israeli connection. In February, an announced $1.5 billion combination involved XTEND, an Israeli drone maker that supplies the Israeli military, and companies linked to the brothers.

There is still no evidence of Israeli hardware in the Pakistan order. No filing, specification sheet or report reviewed for this investigation identifies Israeli-origin components, software or designs in the systems Powerus proposes to sell Islamabad.

The Guardian draws on Ukrainian-developed technology, while Powerus advertises US production for its domestic customers. The Israeli connection documented here runs through executives, a charity and the investors' other ventures, and should be judged on that basis.

A war advisor at the table

One Powerus advisor's position during the war with Iran also deserves attention. On 24 March, retired General Keith Kellogg went on Fox News and urged American ground troops to seize Kharg Island. Kellogg is listed on Powerus's website as a strategic advisor.

Velicovich, who led the delegation to Rawalpindi, is a Fox News contributor and argued on air that Iran's “death by a thousand cuts” strategy was failing.

As Gulf governments sought counter-drone defenses during the fighting, Powerus pitched its interceptors to Abu Dhabi, Bloomberg reported in April. Velicovich told AP the firm was running “many demos across the Middle East right now” and added, “We are at war, my friend.”

In July, after the June Islamabad memorandum briefly extended the ceasefire, Powerus announced a facility in the UAE with a stated capacity to build 3,000 low-cost interceptors a month.

Pakistan, meanwhile, had mediated the April ceasefire and the June Islamabad memorandum between Washington and Tehran. Hostilities resumed, leaving Islamabad to defend a diplomatic framework that had not brought a lasting peace. The proposed supplier to its army was courting Gulf demand for systems designed to intercept Iranian drones during the same conflict.

Pakistan’s red line and its US opening

Pakistan's position on Israel is formally unambiguous. Its passport is marked “valid for all countries of the world except Israel.” When Trump pressed Muslim states to join the Abraham Accords as part of a proposed Iran settlement in May, Defense Minister Khawaja Asif rejected the idea on television.

Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar later told reporters Pakistan's stance had not changed: recognition would require a Palestinian state on the 1967 lines with Al-Quds as its capital.

Sixteen weeks later, however, a US drone company with an Israeli military veteran among its founders met Munir at GHQ. Ynet had reported in March that Washington regarded Pakistan as a possible future candidate for expanding the Abraham Accords.

FT described the recent US–Pakistan relationship as “rooted primarily in bonhomie between Trump and Munir.” The Cradle called him Trump's “blue-eyed general” in May and noted that observers “have struggled to identify the force behind this growing synergy.”

Khan of Quwa offers a less categorical view of Pakistan's red line: “As long as there's a country in the middle, Pakistan does not have qualms about being in close proximity to Israel.”

The broader aim, according to Gul, “is to stay engaged with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner through Powerus.” Kushner, who brokered the Abraham Accords in 2020, participated in US–Iran diplomacy in Islamabad in April.

Powerus thus sits where several political and commercial lines meet. Trump family capital is expected in the merged firm. Its leadership includes a former member of Israeli military intelligence and an executive with Elbit experience.

Two founders also have roles in a charity that supplies Israeli forces. Pakistan, which refuses to recognize Israel, has placed a limited order with the US company.

The missing specifications

Powerus has also presented the deal as an opportunity to diversify Pakistan's supply chains. China accounted for 80 percent of Pakistan's arms imports in 2021–25, according to SIPRI figures cited by FT.

Velicovich told the paper that Beijing had “blanketly provided whatever the people here want” and that Washington was seeing “a sort of awakening.”

Pakistan already has substantial drone and counter-drone capabilities. Khan, who has tracked Pakistani procurement for years, told Al Jazeera that Pakistan “technically already makes or is capable of making each of the drones shown by Powerus.”

The air force displayed Chinese and Turkish systems in September, and the state-owned Heavy Industries Taxila had unveiled its P-905 interceptor in July. “Our indigenous anti-drone system is also on track,” Gul says.

Yet a retired Pakistani general interviewed by Al Jazeera argued that the attraction may lie in electronics, integration and production at scale rather than in the airframe design alone. Khan also suggested a partnership could bring US capital to Pakistani drone start-ups. Those are plausible reasons to engage a new supplier, even if the military has yet to explain its own reasoning.

The origin of a future Pakistani-made drone cannot be read from a sales pitch either. A Powerus registration statement describes a partnership to commercialize technology originally developed in Ukraine and owned by G1 Exploration.

Its Guardian is advertised as compliant with US defense procurement restrictions on certain Chinese components for US customers. Khan expects an inexpensive Pakistani production line would depend on Chinese upstream subassemblies.

Export paperwork adds another unanswered question. Depending on the system and its classification, a US military drone may require authorization under State Department or Commerce Department rules; Powerus itself says the memorandum is subject to “US regulatory compliance and government approvals.”

Pakistan's Import Policy Order prohibits goods of Israeli origin or imported from Israel. The rule concerns the origin and movement of goods, rather than the prior service or charitable affiliations of a US company's officers.

The company's dealings with India raise a separate question for Pakistan. Powerus acquired Tandem Defense LLC in January; its registration statement describes the acquisition as a $500 cash transaction involving a business with no operations at the time.

In June, a Powerus company licensed its Guardian-1 interceptor technology to India's Paras Defense for manufacture and sale in India. An Indian stock-exchange filing confirms the exclusive territorial license; its commercial terms need to be distinguished from the still undisclosed Pakistani order.

Pakistan and India fought a brief drone-heavy conflict in May 2025, and Pakistani analysts have pointed out that both rivals have previously bought from the same suppliers. A retired Pakistani air marshal nonetheless warned Al Jazeera that a common source could create operational-security risks, particularly if one customer has greater financial capacity.

Islamabad has not disclosed what it bought, or what safeguards, if any, it secured from a company already licensing drone technology to India.