Trump’s Sons Backed a Drone Company. Now the Air Force Is Buying Its Weapons

The troops deserve equipment selected because it works, not to make one family richer...

Powerus Drones image of the Guardian-2. Markup by the author in Canva

Somewhere inside the Pentagon, someone actually learned something from Ukraine.

Cheap attack drone comes in.

Cheap interceptor goes out.

Expensive missile stays in the magazine.

I know… Revolutionary thinking, right?

Great. Give that Pentagon planner a Dunkin Donut. Possibly a day off.

Then someone followed the corporate trail and discovered that the drone company selling the interceptor is financially backed by the sitting president’s sons.

I feel like this would be a good time to play the “losing horn” from The Price is Right gameshow:

At this point, we all collectively shouldn’t be surprised about the blatant enrichment of the Trump regime at taxpayer expense. What does surprise me, and in fact worry me, is that the Air Force might have chosen an interceptor drone based not on its performance, but to make the Trump family more money.

Because lives will be saved or lost based on the success or failure of these interceptor drones.

The Deal

Bloomberg reported this week that the US Air Force agreed to buy an undisclosed number of interceptor drones from Powerus, a company backed by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump.

The system in question is the Guardian-2, a semi-autonomous interceptor designed to defeat cheap one-way attack drones of the Shahed variety. The Air Force placed what Powerus is calling a “limited procurement order” after a successful demonstration.

This is happening while the US is in its third month of active conflict with Iran, a war prosecuted under the foreign policy decisions of the same president whose sons are financially tied to the company now selling weapons into that operational environment.

I’ll pause so you can pour some whiskey into your coffee. It helps…

Let’s be honest about something first: America genuinely needs cheap drone interceptors.

If you’ve been reading this newsletter for more than five minutes, you already know this. You’ve heard me talk about the air defense cost curve until you can recite it in your sleep. Shahed-style drones are a real threat. Israel and Gulf states have been bleeding through expensive interceptor missiles trying to knock down $20,000 drones with $2 million Patriot rounds, and the math is killing them. So have US forces in the region.

The solution space is obvious, thanks to Ukrainian ingenuity: you need cheap interceptors that can be produced at volume, fielded by small teams, and replaced fast when they get chewed up.

A perfect system that arrives in 2034 is a war crime against the people who need it in 2026. A decent system that troops can actually hold, launch, and reload, that saves lives.

So, the need is real and Guardian-2 may genuinely be part of the answer. The issue is that we don’t have clear line of sight into the interceptors competing for the same contract, how much better the Guardian-2 presumably is, and whether the decision was weighted by Trump’s sons.

What We Know About Guardian-2

Powerus describes the Guardian-2 as a low-cost, semi-autonomous, high-speed counter-drone interceptor purpose-built to defeat hostile unmanned threats at scale.

The company says the Air Force tested it against capability gaps facing small teams operating in austere environments against Group 1-3 small drones, and that a limited procurement order followed.

A few things worth noting about that framing.

First, a limited procurement order is not a program of record. Powerus itself says so in the forward-looking statement attached to its own announcement.

Second, a purchase order, even a limited one, suggests Guardian-2 cleared some technical threshold. It probably launched. It probably tracked. It probably intercepted something in a controlled environment. That’s not nothing.

Third, and this is the part the press release buries, Guardian-2 is not publicly combat-proven.

A demonstration is a controlled event. Combat is a drunk fucking raccoon with a chainsaw.

Test ranges have planned geometry, known airspace, rehearsed operators, and everyone understands which way is up.

Combat gives you dust, wind, jamming, bad batteries, bent launch rails, operator fatigue, false tracks, friendly aircraft in the kill zone, and a target that absolutely did not read your rules of engagement before it crossed the wire.

“Designed to defeat Shaheds” does not mean “has defeated Shaheds.” “Semi-autonomous” does not mean reliable under GPS denial, electronic warfare, clutter, and the general circus of modern air defense.

Ukraine has taught us this lesson in blood and wreckage.

The battlefield does not grade on a curve. I’ve seen gear that performed beautifully in Kentucky and turned into a Sankara stone from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom the first week it encountered real sand and terrified twenty-two-year-olds trying to operate it at three in the morning.

Promising. Demonstrated. Purchased in limited quantity. Not publicly combat-proven.

That’s an accurate description of where Guardian-2 sits.

The company’s co-founder says “the Guardian-2 works. The kill chain works.” I hope he’s right. But hope doesn’t actually save the lives of American servicemembers or our allies (what few we have left).

The Ethics Problem

Reuters reported in March that Aureus Greenway Holdings, (a golf club company… I know, stay with me), backed by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. planned to merge with Powerus to take the drone company public.

Powerus was founded in 2025. The Trump brothers’ involvement ran through American Venture Partners, a vehicle also backed by Dominari Holdings, a fintech and securities group operating out of Trump Tower.

A golf club company merging with a drone manufacturer sounds like a Mad Libs page from a defense investment conference after the bourbon came out and the prostitutes went home. But that’s the actual structure.

Retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, Trump’s former special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, joined Powerus’s advisory board. Powerus was simultaneously trying to sell drone interceptors to Gulf countries that were under Iranian attack and dependent on US military protection.

Remember, these Gulf nations are only under attack because of a war Trump started.

If this feels gross, good, that means you’re a generally good person.

If Obama had done this deal, Congress would already be halfway through impeachment proceedings.

Former Bush White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter warned the arrangement creates “serious conflict-of-interest concerns.”

No shit, Richard. Welcome to the party, pal.

The president controls foreign policy. Okay.

The president controls the chain of command. Slightly more damning.

The president appoints senior defense officials. Is it getting hot in here?

The president shapes the operational environment in which defense contractors make money. Ding, ding, ding! WINNER!

When the president’s family backs a defense company selling weapons into that same environment, the public has every right to demand a full accounting of how that deal happened, who approved it, and whether anyone in the chain of command felt, consciously or not, that a company with that last name attached deserved extra attention.

In a functioning political culture, that would be the boring consensus position. Like “don’t fly into a thunderstorm” or “don’t invade Russia in winter.”

If the Guardian-2 shows up in theater with Trump’s face on the side, or rebranded as 47, or painted gold, I guess we’ll have our answer as to whether this was politically motivated.

The Questions That Require Answers

The best defense of this deal is that the Air Force needed the capability and bought what worked.

Fine. Then show the receipts.

What was the competitive field? Who else bid? Were other counter-drone interceptors evaluated? What was the unit cost? What acquisition pathway did this run through: rapid acquisition, sole source, Other Transaction Authority?

Did anyone in the White House, the National Security Council, or Trump-adjacent business circles contact Air Force officials about Powerus? Were ethics lawyers consulted? Were conflict checks conducted? Did anyone ask whether purchasing weapons from a company backed by the president’s sons might, at bare minimum, create the appearance of favoritism?

On the capability side: what’s the effective engagement range?

What sensors guide the interceptor?

How does it handle jamming?

Does it require GPS?

Can it operate at night?

What’s the kill probability against actual Shahed-type threats, not a drone that flew a cooperative profile on a clear day in a range environment, but a drone that’s flying low, fast, and autonomously toward something it wants to kill?

Can it discriminate targets in crowded airspace?

What does each interceptor actually cost at scale?

The public record doesn’t answer most of these questions.

That’s a problem.

There’s a corrosive dynamic that gets lost in the procurement weeds.

When foreign governments see the president’s family financially positioned near defense contracts, they start wondering whether buying from that family-adjacent company earns them goodwill.

When military officials see politically connected firms circling procurement opportunities during a live war the president is prosecuting, even unspoken pressure starts to shape decisions.

When the public sees a defense purchase they can’t evaluate because the process wasn’t transparent, every subsequent contract looks like a favor.

I’m not a seer, but I predict that once this regime ends, (and it will, eventually), a lot of people are going to jail. That’s assuming, of course, that Trump doesn’t preemptively pardon the entire executive branch, Department of Defense, and Justice Department on his way out.

What this is, ultimately, is a betrayal of trust.

Democracies run on trust. Western armies run on trust. Procurement systems run on trust. Once people believe the defense acquisition process has become a concierge service for making the president richer, every contract becomes suspect. That’s corrosive to the military itself.

The US military needs to buy fast. The current procurement landscape is devilishly slow. But speed without clean ethics is how you end up with dead soldiers while the rich people are cashing out.

What America Actually Needs

America should buy drone interceptors. It should buy them by the pallet. It should test them hard, break them fast, fix what’s broken, and get the best systems to the people who need them before the threat architecture evolves past the solution.

Powerus may have something real.

Guardian-2 may be part of the answer. The Air Force engineers and acquisition professionals who evaluated it may have made a completely defensible technical decision.

And the Trump family’s financial proximity to this deal is still outrageous.

Those two things can both be true. Simultaneously. In the same sentence.

War is already a machine that consumes money, metal, and young lives at a pace that staggers any honest accounting. It doesn’t need a family rewards program stapled to the side. It doesn’t need soldiers, airmen, or sailors wondering, even briefly, whether the gear in their hands got there because it was the best option or because someone’s sons needed a return on their investment.

The troops deserve equipment selected because it works.

The defense industry deserves a market where companies compete on capability, cost, reliability, and production capacity, not proximity to power.

The public deserves a government that can look them in the eye and explain, with full transparency, how this deal happened and who benefited in broad daylight.

Sunlight, it turns out, is also a pretty effective counter-drone system.

Show the process. Show the procurement path. Show the safeguards. Show the testing standards.

Show who profits.

Because we shouldn’t let anyone make this normal.

— Wes

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