Which little – known American military company is set to profit in the wake of Israel’s war on the Palestinian enclave?
Michael Picard for Inkstick
Independent Arms trade researcher – Member of the Forum on the Arms Trade
Multiple international publications , including Reuters, have reported that an American military contractor called UG Solutions is set to manage a checkpoint in Gaza as part of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. Their purpose is to ensure that vehicles moving into the war-ravaged northern half of the Strip aren’t used to transport weapons. The company did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump recently said that the US would “take over” and “own” Gaza, a proposal that sparked harsh criticism from both the United Nations and Washington’s allies. The Trump administration has since walked back those comments, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio clarifying that the displacement of the Strip’s Palestinian population would be “interim.”
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To understand what kind of company UG Solutions is, it’s helpful to think about the PMSC industry as having four size categories. There are the giants — such as Amentum or G4S — that operate globally and have subsidiaries in many if not most countries. Then there are large companies with a national or regional presence, followed by midsize contractors that run out of a central facility and often operate as subcontractors for the giants. And then there are the small operators, for what are essentially informal networks of veterans with overlapping military service histories.
UG Solutions appears to be a small-scale company. Its website contains no information — only a message form and a generic stock image of a military-like command post. Its registered address is a post office box in North Carolina, and it was incorporated in early 2023 by Jameson Govoni, a special forces veteran.
UG Solutions is closely tied to the Sentinel Foundation, which can only be described as a military NGO. Sentinel claims to be an outfit of special forces veterans hunting down child traffickers and saving the needy. It partners with a mix of Christian charities and gun stores. Sentinel is similar to other charity groups that sprang up following the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
UG Solutions founder Govoni also established Sentinel alongside fellow veteran Glenn Devitt. The pair also had another venture selling hangover cures they claim to have developed when they were required to get drunk while undercover. Govoni has incorporated several other businesses and entities, including Frontier Cannabis Co LLC.
A 2022 Internal Revenue Service filing obtained by Inkstick listed Devitt as Sentinel’s president and Govoni as the vice president. That tax filing put their salaries at $150,000 each.
UG Solutions would be unremarkable if it didn’t land a contract at the heart of the world’s most closely watched ceasefire. While there are arguments for using a PMSC to implement this arrangement, it is unclear why a seemingly unknown company with no apparent experience in managing checkpoints was awarded this highly sensitive, dangerous job.
Yet, it matches a pattern that emerged during the first Trump administration . Between 2017 and 2020, small, hard-to-trace US-linked contractors cropped up in several hotspots with varying (albeit ambiguous) degrees of official approval.
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One infamous case involved a failed plan to furnish Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar with an elite airborne unit capable of abducting high value targets in 2019-2020. According to a UN report seen by Reuters the plan was allegedly promoted by Erik Prince, founder of the infamous and now-defunct private military contractor Blackwater and brother of Trump’s then-Education Secretary, and was implemented by the United Arab Emirates-based PMSC Lancastar6.
Prince’s alleged involvement would have required a US arms export license as a UN report seen by the New York Times says he apparently brokered an arms transfer to a heavily embargoed conflict zone. His lawyers denied any involvement.
Then there was the failed Operation Gideon in which an outfit of US special forces veterans and Venezuelan dissidents attempted to depose the Nicolas Maduro regime in 2020. The operation was a spectacular failure as regime forces managed to capture the participants, including the American contractors.
The founder of the involved PMSC, Silvercorp USA, claimed to have high-level support from the Trump administration, though the US government strongly denied any involvement.
The appeal of using small PMSCs in sensitive contexts is that they’re deniable and leave a relatively light footprint. They operate in a poorly regulated global market and can exploit loopholes and grey areas that states can’t. They can provide a mechanism for shady transactions, such as arms transfers, resource concessions, or off-the-books payments. They can be dissolved when the job is done, and disowned when they fail.
But they often fail, as all the above cases did, as ambitious adventurers often find themselves in over their heads. If the Gaza ceasefire deteriorates, UG Solutions’ personnel could quickly find themselves at risk of death or capture. Then, there is the risk of causing great civilian harm, akin to Blackwater’s 2007 Nisour Square massacre in Iraq, which left dozens dead and injured.
Using PMSCs as a foreign policy tool also comes with hidden costs in the long run. It encourages other companies to go dark, be political, and avoid accountability. It will also fuel perceptions that the US is behind wildcard mercenary activities — such as Operation Gideon — even when it isn’t. Finally, it sends a signal to other countries that PMSCs are an increasingly legitimate tool of statecraft.
Read all articles and analyses of the Special Report: “Armories of the Middle East” here.
This article was first published on Feb. 22 by the weekend edition of the newspaper “TA NEA”.
