Drones Are the Hot Topic These Days, and When the Fox Is Out, the Chickens Are at Risk.
A NYTimes article caught my eye and, it being a Sunday, I thought “what a great time to sneak out a hot topic, and let it cool a bit overnight.”
That’s my natural suspicions borne of a long life, watching news-chickens being hatched. The hatching process involves a great deal of crowing before pin-feathers even appear.
The article announces ‘The U.S. Start-Up Making Low-Cost Interceptors for the Iran War,’ subtitle ‘For Florida-based Powerus, becoming a global supplier of counterdrone technology has meant involving the Trumps, a golf course and a new way of doing business.’
There were simply too many pin-feathers on that hatchling for me to ignore.
Its promotional nonsense reminded me of a Johnny Mercer lyric written in 1944, nominated for an Academy Award and made famous when sung by Bing Crosby in Here Come the Waves, co-starring Betty Hutton.
Gooey, I admit, but WWII needed all the help it could get.
You gotta ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive
E-lim-i-nate the negative
And latch on to the affirmative
Don’t mess with Mr. inbetweenYou gotta spread joy up to the maximum
Bring gloom down to the minimum
Have faith, or pandemonium
Liable to walk upon the sceneSorry ‘bout the old timey reference, folks, but it’s a reminder that ‘what goes ‘round, comes ’round’ when history picks up the baton.
But the cleverly named ‘Powerus’ desperately needs to keep pandemonium from walking all over what facts are currently known.
Time for me to run for the writerly cover of claiming opinion. I am not personally presenting any insider information about Powerus. This entire essay is conjecture on my part…it cannot be taken to any reliable bank.
Having said that, a whiff of chicken is detected by this old fox, not because Powerus is misleading, but because its public claims seem to run well ahead of independently verifiable evidence. There is an actual company here, with real hardware, and serious financing behind it.
But “proven combat effectiveness,” “hundreds of confirmed intercepts,” and claims of “current deployment across multiple Middle East countries,” are a number of lengths ahead of the actual horse in this race.
Janes, one of the world’s oldest and most respected independent military and defense-intelligence publishers, identifies three already operating companies that make up the Powerus combine.
Kaizen Aerospace for heavy-lift drones,
Tandem Defense for tactical drones, and
Agile Autonomy for maritime systems.
But these are drone manufacturing companies and Powerus is claiming the production of interceptors. Quite a different thing, that.
The company centerpiece is its Guardian interceptor, currently described as a “Confirmed interceptor with proven combat effectiveness.” By whom, one might ask?
Powerus was only formed in 2025, yet it claims ‘hundreds of confirmed intercepts,’ while what it claims as a ‘fire and forget’ version is still being tested.
Forgive me, if this sounds more like a ‘make claims and forget’ pitch to investors.
I have, so far, not been able to verify any sort of independent documentation for where those ‘hundreds of combat intercepts occurred, which military operated the aircraft, against what targets, or what percentage of those actually succeeded.’
Five months ago, the company advised that “Our team is doing many demos across the Middle East right now for our interceptors.”
Which is cool, but it wouldn’t identify the countries or provide details. Bearing in mind that a demonstration is not a deployment, a deployment isn’t necessarily an operational interception, and an operational interception doesn’t mean a successful combat record, one can but wonder what any of that nonsense actually means.
Hang on, the story gets even better in the ‘ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive’ department.
Just this week, Powerus announced a $22 million contract to supply counter-drone technology to oil-and-gas operators in the Middle East (without naming the companies) and announced that Erik Prince’s newly created Vectus Air Defense Systems may use Powerus equipment as part of integrated air-defense packages.
Now you see it, now you don’t, folks, in the race to ‘spread joy up to the maximum, bring gloom down to the minimum, have faith, or pandemonium, liable to walk upon the scene.’
Oops, hang on again, Pandemonium just walked upon the scene.
Eric and Donald Trump Jr. are backing Aureus Greenway Holdings (their publicly traded golf-course company) through which Powerus plans to become publicly traded by reverse merger.
If you don’t understand what a ‘reverse merger’ is, neither did I.
Apparently, it’s a way for a private company to become publicly traded without going through the normal IPO process. Sounds more shady than the old oak tree to me, but it’s legal…yet another example of the wonderments that are legal in this brave new world.
Imagine this:
Private Company A, an operating business that wants its shares traded publicly, merges with
Public Company B, already listed on a stock exchange, but perhaps much smaller.
Instead of Company A conducting an IPO, it merges with B. And A’s owners receive enough shares to control the combined company.
Legally, the public company may be the surviving corporation. Economically, however, the private company has effectively taken it over.
That’s why it’s called a reverse merger, and I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell at a really good price if you believe all that hocus-pocus.
Anyone interested?
The Trump family is involved.
Now, is anyone interested?
Possibly so, but certainly the fox.