President Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and another senior advisor, Steve Bannon, asked two military contractors, including the founder of Blackwater, to help form an alternative defense strategy in Afghanistan.

Kushner and Bannon asked Stephen Feinberg, the owner of DynCorp International, and Erik Prince, of Blackwater fame, to submit proposals on the use of contractors in place of US soldiers in Afghanistan, the New York Times reported.

The Pentagon is known to be considering a troop surge in the country where the US battled the Taliban for 16 years.

Bannon brought up the contractor approach to Defense Secretary James Mattis last Saturday, the Times reported, but the Pentagon chief was not interested.

White House aides asked Stephen Feinberg, the owner of DynCorp International (right), and Erik Prince, of Blackwater fame, to submit proposals on the use of contractors in place of US soldiers in Afghanistan

Prince's old firm, Blackwater, is a lingering stain in the United States' occupation of Iraq. Contractors who worked for Prince were tried and convicted for shooting 17 civilians in an Iraqi square.

The security firm proprietor sold his shares in Blackwater Worldwide in 2010 and moved to the UAE. He's now the head of Frontier Resource Group, a private equity firm. He was seen in the US last year at a secret meeting in Trump Tower.

Officials who spoke to the Washington Post have said Prince appears to have functioned as an outside adviser to Trump, although they and the White House have stressed he had no official role in the presidential transition.

A mega-donor to Trump and the Republican Party, Prince is, at the very least, a known associate of Bannon, the former editor of Breitbart News.

Prince once called Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin an 'agent of influence very sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood' on Bannon's radio show.

A New York Times article on Monday detailed the White House's solicitation of Prince's plan for Afghanistan for the first time, but the details of his proposal were already known.

In a May 17 appearance on Tucker Carlson's Fox News show, Prince made the case for an Afghan force managed by a contracting company on behalf of the US.

'If you look back in history, the way the English operated India for 250 years, they had an army that was largely run by companies and no English soldiers. So very, cheap, very low cost, very simple, very adaptable,' he said.

Carlson asked if he was proposing to replace the US military occupation in Afghanistan with an ‘American South Asia Company,’ essentially.

'Something like that, sure,' Prince said.

He explained that the 300,000 Afghan force lacks enabling functions and claimed that the rules of engagement are so tight, American soldiers have to talk to a lawyer to drop a bomb.

'We’ve fought for the last 15 years with the 1st Infantry Division model,' he said in the May appearance. 'Now we should fight with an East India Company model, and do it much cheaper.'

A New York Times article on Monday detailed the White House's solicitation of Prince's plan for Afghanistan for the first time, but the details of his proposal were already known

In a May 17 appearance on Tucker Carlson's Fox News show, Prince made the case for an Afghan force managed by a contracting company on behalf of the US

He advocated for the policy later in May in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, where he argued that contractors would be 'cheaper and better than the military' in Afghanistan.

The White House had previously denied having a relationship with Prince - at least in the transition - after the Washington Post reported on his involvement in a secret effort to establish a back channel with Russia before Trump took office.

The Post said in an April expose that Prince met with a Russian close to Vladimir Putin nine days before Trump was inaugurated in the Seychelles.

The UAE set up the tete-a-tete in hopes that Russia could be persuaded to end its relationship with Iran and Syria in exchange for massive sanctions relief from the US, the article said.

European and Arab officials said that Prince presented himself as an envoy for Trump's government-in-waiting.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer denied all knowledge of the situation when the Post approached him about it.

'We are not aware of any meetings, and Erik Prince had no role in the transition,' Spicer said.

Prince was a major donor to Trump last election cycle.

He gave a combined $250,000 to the president's campaign, the Republican National Committee and a super PAC that's managed by Rebekah Mercer, a close associate of Trump, the Post reported then.

His sister, Betsy DeVos, and her husband, Richard, donated $2.7 million to GOP candidates and PACs in 2016, the Post said. Richard DeVos inherited the Amway fortune.

Prince is a known associate of Bannon, a senior advisor to Trump. He used to appear on Bannon's radio show

The news outler's April article said the meeting between Prince and the unidentified Russian was under FBI scrutiny.

A spokesman for Prince told the Post that the meeting 'had nothing to do' with Trump.

'Erik had no role on the transition team. This is a complete fabrication,' the person said. 'Why is the so-called under-resourced intelligence community messing around with surveillance of American citizens when they should be hunting terrorists?'

The Times reported in 2011 that Prince had secretly been contacted by the UAE to put together a 800-person battalion of foreign troops to back up the country's military, which is viewed internally as inadequate.

An article on Monday said that Prince and Feinberg, the billionaire financier who operates DynCorp, are working with Bannon now on proposals for Afghanistan.

The Pentagon is conducting a review of the military operation there with the help of Trump national security advisor HR McMaster. It's due to the president this month.

According to the Times, Kushner was part of the solicitation, too, although he has no specific position on the matter, other than to see what other options, besides the Pentagon plan, are available.

Prince reportedly briefed McMaster and other White House officials on his proposal, while Feinberg spoke to the president directly.

Feinberg had previously been named as someone Trump might bring in to conduct a review of the intelligence agencies in conjunction with the dramatic number of leaks that have occurred since he took office.

DynCorp has already made $2.5 billion off of State Department contracts and stands to make more in Afghanistan if Feinberg's proposal is accepted.

His plan, unlike Prince's, would give the CIA control over operations in the country, which has less oversight than the US military.