It is a bold plan. A team of defense industry start-ups envisions a new fleet of miniaturized, unmanned aircraft carriers stuffed with autonomous killer drones, antiaircraft missiles and torpedoes that will take on just about any enemy at sea.
And this group pitching the Pentagon comes with an unusual sweetener: close financial ties to President Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., who is positioned to profit considerably if this ambitious but unproven venture succeeds.
The proposal by the two companies — Puerto Rico-based Red Cat, with drone parts supplied by Unusual Machines, based in Orlando, Fla. — reflects the unprecedented role the president’s sons are playing, not only as supporters of their father’s policies but also as investors in ventures selling to agencies their father controls.
Unusual Machines gave Donald Trump Jr. 200,000 shares of its stock late last year in return for his help as an adviser. The shares are now worth about $2.6 million. Though officials at the company and the Pentagon say Mr. Trump’s son has not reached out to the Defense Department on their behalf, he has relationships with some high-level figures there.
Donald Trump Jr. helped screen candidates for top jobs at the Pentagon on behalf of his father after the election. He is also an important and unusually vocal ally of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, appearing at events with him at least twice this year.
Don Jr., as he is broadly known, through these two defense contractors and others he is investing in, has become part of the famed Beltway military-industrial complex, even as his father is setting policy priorities that are likely to benefit the companies he has invested in.
In a recent podcast, Donald Trump Jr. acknowledged that as he helped screen potential candidates for Pentagon positions, he pushed to find someone open to investing more money in drones.
“Everyone was like an old F-15 pilot, and that’s incredible,” he said last month on “Triggered With Don Jr.,” his podcast, referring to candidates for top Air Force jobs and the Boeing-made fighter jets he claimed many of them once flew. “But they sort of want to go with what they know, which is, ‘We’re fighter pilots.’ But they are better served with a drone that costs a tiny fraction of that of a plane.”
The push for a different approach reflects the nature of how warfare is changing, as both sides in the Russia-Ukraine war have relied heavily on drones. Industry analysts have projected that overall spending on commercial drone systems in North America could reach $21 billion in the next five years, up from $11 billion last year.
The Defense Department, under orders from President Trump, is working to buy drones manufactured with domestic-made parts out of fear that Chinese-made ones might create a national security risk.
Donald Trump Jr., through a spokesman, rejected any suggestion that he had inappropriately used his status as a member of the first family, adding that he had not reached out to any government officials on behalf of companies he has ties to.
“Don is a lifelong businessman and does not interface with the federal government as part of his role with Unusual Machines or any of the other companies he advises or invests in,” said Andy Surabian, the spokesman.
Megan Gorman, who wrote a book examining presidential families and sources of wealth, said work by the adult children of presidents had caused complications before.
Two of George H.W. Bush’s sons — George W. Bush and Neil M. Bush — were in the oil business when their father was vice president, and Hunter Biden was paid as a consultant when his father was in the vice president’s office. And the son of President Franklin D. Roosevelt had a financial interest in a Boston insurance firm that secured contracts from companies with ties to the government, while working as a White House aide.
But serving as a paid adviser to a military contractor is a new twist in modern times, said Ms. Gorman, a tax lawyer.
“Don Jr. has pushed the envelope on how presidential children can behave,” she said. “But there are no explicit rules of what they can do, although maybe there should be.”
Tackling a Challenge
President Trump picked as Army secretary a former venture capitalist named Daniel P. Driscoll, who recently promised to revamp contracting efforts to speed up purchases of drones and other high-tech gear.
During a speech this month near the Pentagon before hundreds of Army leaders and industry executives, Mr. Driscoll showed off a drone that the Army had built using motors and four other parts provided by Unusual Machines.
“Across the Army, we will equip soldiers with these kinds of expendable drones that deliver devastating effects at a massive discount,” Mr. Driscoll said. “We are leading the entire United States government to tackle this challenge.”
That day, the Army’s 101st Airborne Division announced it intended to buy 3,500 drone engines from Unusual Machines — its first major direct order from the Pentagon. The Army indicated it could order another 20,000 parts next year, even though the company started manufacturing its own drone motors in the United States only in recent weeks, an extraordinarily fast turn for a Pentagon start-up.
Some of those drone parts were shown off in February at Mar-a-Lago, the Trump family’s resort in Palm Beach, Fla., during a demonstration for Donald Trump Jr. after he had started work as a company adviser. (The drone flight was cut short by security personnel, because the president was also at the family club at the time.)
“A lot of good feedback on the investor base,” Allan Evans, the chief executive of Unusual Machines, said in an interview, recalling the Mar-a-Lago meeting with Donald Trump Jr.
Donald Trump Jr.’s stock holdings in Unusual Machines are just one example on a growing list of financial ties that Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, the president’s second son, have to companies that are selling products to the federal government or rely on it for regulatory approvals needed to increase their sales.
Donald Trump Jr. is an executive at 1789 Capital, a venture capital firm that has made investments in Firehawk Aerospace, SpaceX and Anduril, each of which have secured Pentagon contracts awarded this year, even as he continues to champion Mr. Hegseth. His nomination to serve as defense secretary was imperiled by a troubled personal life, including paying a woman who accused him of raping her in 2017, though he claimed the encounter was consensual.
“Hegseth was ‘incredibly talented, battle-proven leader,’” Mr. Trump posted on his social media account in January, as questions swirled about Mr. Hegseth’s nomination. He added in a follow-up post, “Confirm @PeteHegseth and Make Our Military Great Again!”
Mr. Surabian, the spokesman, said it was ridiculous to suggest Donald Trump Jr.’s support for Mr. Hegseth had anything to do with his work with Unusual Machines.
“It’s bizarre that anyone would even posit that Don’s support for Secretary Hegseth is about anything other than his strong support for his father’s political and policy agenda,” he said.
Questions About Ability
Unusual Machines and Red Cat are run by Mr. Evans and Jeff Thompson, respectively, two Puerto Rico-based entrepreneurs who have a long history of backing technology-related start-ups.
Mr. Thompson, whose previous endeavors included helping run a wireless internet company, is the one proposing a fleet of autonomous ocean vessels that would carry armed drones, missiles and other weapons. The mini drone ships would sell for up to $2 million apiece.
“Basically pure kamikaze,” Mr. Thompson said of the plan for a 16-foot-long version of the craft.
The weapons would be loaded with explosives like C-4 that blow up as they attack enemy targets. “When you have 800 pounds of C-4 on it,” he said, “you can take out a large ship.”
The plan is for Unusual Machines to build drone parts in the United States for Red Cat vessels and other more advanced drones that Red Cat plans to sell to the Pentagon.
None of Red Cat’s marine vessels has been sold to the Pentagon yet, and it is unclear if they will work as promised. But Mr. Thompson already presented his plan to Navy officials at a drone demonstration exercise in Portugal last month, although he would not name the officials with whom he engaged.
“I don’t want to cut off our conversations as a blabbermouth,” Mr. Thompson said. He had similar engagements with the Army, he said. “We talk to people all over the Army, from head to toe,” trying to sell the company’s gear, he said.
Unusual Machines is also pitching its drone parts products despite some questions about its ability to deliver the goods. Until recently, it imported most of its parts from China before it started to put its brand name on devices made by a manufacturer in Ashland, Ohio.
As of this month, Unusual Machines has only about 50 employees, with about a quarter of them involved in manufacturing at a small warehouse assembly line it has set up in Orlando. The company’s customers, on a website that sells parts under the brand name Rotor Riot, have complained about the quality of some of its devices, an issue Mr. Evans said he was working on.
“Anytime you launch a new part, reliability is lower,” he said.
Several of the Unusual Machine parts are certified by the Pentagon as approved for use in military drones, a process called Blue UAS.
Mr. Evans said the Army had decided on its own to buy the company’s motors for its new drones, which are intentionally designed to be easy to assemble and cost less than $750 apiece. The Unusual Machines motors, for example, are being sold to the Army for only about $50 each, meaning the entire initial order was worth only about $225,000, the company said — a tiny amount for the Pentagon.
Maj. Jonathon Bless, a public affairs officer in the 101st Airborne based at Fort Campbell, Ky., said in a statement to The New York Times that he could not address why Unusual Machines parts were picked, other than that they met the Army’s requirements.
A spokesman for Secretary Driscoll said the office had no record of him meeting with representatives from Unusual Machines or Red Cat since he was confirmed.
‘Like Oprah’
Unusual Machines has close ties to a New York-based investment bank, Dominari Securities, which has headquarters in Trump Tower and recently hired Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump as paid advisers.
Dominari was the lead adviser for Unusual Machines during its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange in February 2024, and then with a series of follow-up fund-raising efforts as well as the transfer of brands owned by Red Cat to Unusual Machines.
As of this spring, Mr. Trump’s two older sons cumulatively owned more than three million shares in Dominari, now worth more than $17 million, and also serve on the company’s advisory board.
Dominari, which has grown rapidly since it announced ties to the Trump family, boasted this month that it had raised more than $1.4 billion in capital this year “to support American companies” in sectors such as defense technology.
That is how Donald Trump Jr. became involved in Unusual Machines, Mr. Evans said.
Mr. Trump’s son has not served in the military, but he has said publicly that he is a licensed pilot and has a longtime interest in aviation. The chief executive at Dominari told him about Unusual Machines and then connected him to the company, Mr. Evans said.
“Him joining the advisory board was like Oprah joining Weight Watchers,” Mr. Evans said, referring to the attention Oprah Winfrey gave the weight-loss company a decade ago, when she joined its board. “There’s also a huge awareness and just general association that positions us perhaps to fund managers that are curious because of that and have reached out.”
Donald Trump Jr. made an initial investment in Unusual Machines, and then was given an additional 200,000 shares for his work as an adviser. The day his appointment was announced, the company’s stock nearly doubled, earning Mr. Trump millions of dollars in paper profits.
“The need for drones is obvious,” Mr. Trump said in a statement on the day his appointment was announced. “It is also obvious that we must stop buying Chinese drones and Chinese drone parts.”
Mr. Evans said that he had not asked Donald Trump Jr. to help with parts sales to the federal government, and that his role was to provide financial and business advice. Most of Unusual Machines’ sales, he said, would be to other drone makers. That includes Red Cat, which ordered $800,000 worth of parts this month for a new drone it called FANG and hoped to sell to the Pentagon and other government agencies.
The questions about Donald Trump Jr. and any special favors were a distraction, Mr. Evans said, and missed the value that the company brought, which was onshore drone production.
“People are looking for things that don’t exist,” Mr. Evans said.
Eric Lipton is a Times investigative reporter, who digs into a broad range of topics from Pentagon spending to toxic chemicals.
The post Trump’s Son Is Poised to Profit From Pentagon Drone Proposal appeared first on New York Times.
