Pakistan Army

The gap: a drone deal with Trump’s sons’ company — and what it says about the army

On September 16, 2026, a delegation from Powerus, a year-old United States drone company backed by two sons of President Donald Trump, was received by Pakistan’s military chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, at military headquarters in Rawalpindi (Al Jazeera). A day later the company announced it had received a “limited procurement order” from Pakistan’s Ministry of Defence for unmanned aerial systems, alongside a separate memorandum of understanding with senior Pakistani defence officials (Al Jazeera).

That bare sequence is what the Pakistani military’s own statement confirmed — its media wing, Inter-Services Public Relations, said the meeting covered defence procurement, production, and capacity building (Al Jazeera). What the ISPR statement did not mention was the MoU itself (Al Jazeera). The institutional detail only emerged when Powerus told Al Jazeera directly: “The MoU was signed with the Pakistan army. The related procurement order was placed by Pakistan’s Ministry of Defence” (Al Jazeera). The company added that the memorandum was not a definitive agreement, created no purchase obligation, and would be subject to US laws and government approvals (Al Jazeera).

The money behind the vendor is the undercovered part. Powerus was founded in 2025 and is based in Florida; it is set to merge with Aureus Greenway Holdings, a Nasdaq-listed company that owns golf courses in the state, in a deal expected to close in the final quarter of 2026 (Al Jazeera). Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump are investors in Powerus through a vehicle called American Ventures, which is expected to hold a 9.9 percent beneficial stake in the combined company, according to US regulatory filings (Al Jazeera). A spokesperson for Donald Trump Jr. said he was a passive investor with no role in the company’s operations or contracts and no prior knowledge of the Pakistan deals; the White House said there were no conflicts of interest (Al Jazeera). Powerus told Al Jazeera that the Trump brothers played no part in its operations: “Trump’s sons are not advisers to Powerus and have no involvement in how the company runs its business or structures its defence relationships, domestically or internationally. They hold no corporate-governance role” (Al Jazeera). Company co-founder Brett Velicovich, who led the Rawalpindi delegation, told Reuters the MoU included an initial drone-related order but declined to disclose the number of drones, their value, or other details, citing security sensitivities and confidentiality (The Week).

Analysts questioned what Pakistan actually needs from the company. Less than three months before the Rawalpindi meeting, the same firm had given an Indian defence manufacturer the exclusive right to make and sell its drone-interceptor technology in India: in a June 30, 2026 filing to India’s stock exchanges, Paras Defence and Space Technologies said Powerus had granted it an exclusive licence to manufacture and sell its Guardian-1 interceptor technology in India (Al Jazeera). One of Powerus’s co-founders, Ziv Marom, is a veteran of the Israeli military — a sensitivity marker in a country that does not recognise Israel, a retired Pakistani three-star general said (Al Jazeera). And Pakistan already fields an extensive drone inventory: its air force has publicly displayed Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 and Akinci drones, Chinese-made Wing Loong II drones, and the domestically developed Shahpar-II, while China supplied 80 percent of Pakistan’s arms imports from 2021 to 2025, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Al Jazeera). “Pakistan technically already makes or is capable of making each of the drones shown by Powerus,” Bilal Khan, founder of the defence intelligence platform Quwa Group, told Al Jazeera: “It’s unclear where Powerus fits in the long term” (Al Jazeera). A retired Pakistani general with defence-production experience said a company less than a year old, unlisted and without a delivery record “would not usually clear these checks for a strategic defence partnership,” concluding: “Such firms are typically considered too immature unless the MoU is political signalling rather than a procurement decision” (Al Jazeera).

The Munir–Trump channel

The drone deal did not arrive in a vacuum. It is the latest in a fast-deepening relationship between the Pakistan Army’s chief and the Trump White House. After Pakistan’s four-day conflict with India in May 2025 — in which drones were used by both sides — Munir was promoted to the rank of Field Marshal (Al Jazeera; Al Jazeera). In June 2025, President Trump hosted Munir for lunch at the White House, the first time a US president had received a Pakistani army chief who was not also head of state (Al Jazeera). That September, Munir and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif met Trump at the White House, presenting him with samples of Pakistani minerals, weeks after Pakistan signed a $500 million critical-minerals agreement with a US company (Al Jazeera). In January 2026, Pakistan signed a memorandum of understanding with an affiliate of World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s cryptocurrency business (Al Jazeera). Trump has publicly called Munir “my favourite field marshal” (Al Jazeera).

The biggest command overhaul in five decades

While the drone deal made headlines, a deeper institutional change was unfolding at home. In late August 2026, Pakistan’s parliament passed legislation spelling out, for the first time in statute, the powers of the country’s most senior military office — the most significant restructuring of higher military command since 1976, when the post of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee was created (Al Jazeera).

The restructuring began with the 27th constitutional amendment in November 2025, which created the office of Chief of Defence Forces (Al Jazeera). On August 20, 2026, the National Assembly approved the Defence Forces of Pakistan Act and an amendment to the National Command Authority Act, 2010, giving legal shape to the CDF (Al Jazeera). The CJCSC — designed as a coordinator, not a commander, with no authority over the navy or air force — was abolished; in its place stands a Defence Forces Headquarters headed by the CDF, currently Field Marshal Asim Munir, who also serves as army chief (Al Jazeera). The new law gives the CDF “operational command and control of the Armed Forces,” making him responsible to the federal government for military operations across all three services (Al Jazeera).

The army-centric character of the change drew criticism. The Commander of the National Strategic Command, overseeing nuclear-capable forces, must now come from the army and is appointed on the CDF’s recommendation; General Syed Aamer Raza became the first CNSC in July 2026 (Al Jazeera). The CDF is expected to serve as deputy chairman of the National Command Authority, the body overseeing nuclear weapons chaired by the prime minister, while the army set up a separate Army Rocket Force Command in 2025 to handle conventional missile strikes outside the nuclear chain of command (Al Jazeera). Critics argue the shift moves power away from elected civilians — previously, dismissing or retiring an officer required a summary to the prime minister and cabinet; that authority now rests with the CDF alone (Al Jazeera).

An institution that runs a country — and a business empire

The army’s institutional weight is inseparable from its political and economic role. Pakistan’s military, and the army in particular, “has dominated the country’s political life since independence in 1947, staging four coups and ruling directly for more than three decades,” Al Jazeera reported; no elected prime minister has ever completed a full five-year term (Al Jazeera). The new command legislation formalises a degree of authority the army chief has often held informally (Al Jazeera).

Its economic footprint is equally vast. A 2016 written submission by Pakistan’s Defence Ministry to the country’s Senate listed more than 50 business ventures run by the military establishment (Times Now). Ayesha Siddiqa, the Pakistani military analyst and author of Military Inc.: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy, estimated in 2007 that the military’s commercial assets were worth around $20 billion, and later said the military’s private wealth could be as high as $20 billion — split roughly between land and private assets — controlling one-third of all heavy manufacturing and up to 7 percent of Pakistani private assets (Times Now; ThePrint). At the center stands the Fauji Foundation, the army’s flagship welfare foundation; a 2025 Wealth Perception Index by the Economic Policy and Business Development Think Tank ranked it Pakistan’s richest business group, valued at $5.9 billion (ThePrint). Army-linked entities — the Fauji Foundation, the Army Welfare Trust, and the Defence Housing Authority — hold assets across banking, agriculture, manufacturing, real estate, education, and retail, benefiting from tax exemptions, privileged access to state land, and regulatory protections (ThePrint).

What this profile does not claim

• It does not state a precise active-duty strength, since published estimates vary widely and no single figure was verified against a fetched source.
• It does not claim a formal founding date; the army’s political dominance is dated to “since independence in 1947” per Al Jazeera.
• It does not claim the Powerus MoU will lead to deliveries or joint manufacturing — the memorandum creates no purchase obligation.
• It does not state the value or system types of the “limited procurement order,” which all parties kept undisclosed.
• It does not endorse either side of the “political signalling vs. procurement” debate; it reports the analysts’ stated positions and the companies’ and governments’ responses.
• It does not repeat anonymous estimates of the military’s business wealth beyond the attributed Siddiqa and EPBD figures.