Tanks, flypasts, missiles: what to expect at Trump's ‘dictator chic' military parade

The Guardian

20 hours ago

It will be a parade fit for a king – which is precisely why critics worry what message it will send the rest of the world about the future of democracy in America.
On Saturday there will be tanks on the streets of the nation's capital as Washington hosts a celebration of the US army's 250th anniversary, which happens to coincide with Donald Trump's 79th birthday.
While the army has said it has no plans to recognize Trump's birthday, the president will play a major role in a made-for-TV extravaganza that will reportedly feature rocket launchers and missiles.
The show of military might comes just a week after Trump activated thousands of national guard troops and marines to quell protests against immigration raids in Los Angeles. Opponents draw a direct line from that crackdown to Saturday's authoritarian display of dominance.
'He's adopted not only the signifiers of dictator chic but the actual articles of its faith,' said Rick Wilson, a political strategist and co-founder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group. 'North Korea: military parades. China: military parades. Russia: military parades.
'These aren't parades to celebrate a victory and it's certainly not to celebrate the United States army's birthday. This is a parade to aggrandise Donald Trump's ego. No one who knows either Trump or his pattern of behavior would think for a minute this is anything else.'
The army's 250th anniversary was originally conceived as a modest affair: a year ago it filed a permit request for an event on the National Mall featuring 300 people, a concert by the army band and the firing of four cannon. Trump's election, however, led to a radical change of plan.
About 6,700 troops, 150 vehicles and 50 aircraft will be in Washington for a grand celebration. The vehicles have been moved to the city on trains and bigger trucks, while the helicopters will fly in.
There will be a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery on Saturday morning followed by a fitness competition and an army birthday festival on the National Mall, including equipment displays and military demonstrations.
The day will culminate with a parade through the city. A total of 28 M1 Abrams tanks, each weighing more than 60 tons, as well as 28 tracked Bradley Fighting Vehicles, 28 wheeled Stryker combat vehicles, four tracked M-109 Paladin self-propelled howitzers and other towed artillery will maneuver to the start of the parade route just off the National Mall.
They will travel toward the White House, driving over thick metal plating to protect the streets at some points where the vehicles make a sharp turn. The parade will also feature 34 horses, two mules and one dog. The Axios news site reported that a system used to launch rockets in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria will also on be show, and there will be a static display of precision-guided missiles.
A flypast will include Apache and Black Hawk helicopters along with Chinooks. Older aircraft like a second world war-era B-25 bomber and P-51 Mustang will also take part. The helicopters are flying at a time when sharing Washington airspace is still a sensitive issue after a January collision between an army Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines regional jet killed 67.
Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday: 'It's going to be a parade the likes of which I don't know if we've ever had a parade like that. It's going to be incredible. We have a lot of those army airplanes flying over the top and we have tanks all over the place. And we have thousands and thousands of soldiers going to bravely march down the streets.'
It will be the kind of spectacle in which Trump is known to revel. He will preside over an enlistment and re-enlistment ceremony. The US army Golden Knights team will parachute in and present him with a flag. There will also be a fireworks display in the Washington night sky.
Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, said: 'It speaks to something quite fundamental in Trump's overall outlook. In many ways he is a very visual person and he is obsessed with not only how he looks but how everybody else looks as well. The spectacle of a big parade appeals to him for its visuality, if I could coin a term.'
Yet Trump is an unlikely warrior. He did not serve in Vietnam, instead receiving five deferments – four for university, one for the medical reason of bone spurs in his heels. He was the first person to be elected president with no prior political or military experience. He has been forced to deny a report that he disparaged dead soldiers as 'losers' and 'suckers'.
Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, suggests that Trump is using the military as a prop. 'He doesn't particularly like the military,' Blumenthal said. 'He's wary of the military. He's engaging in retribution against the military. He's fired much of the upper level of the flag officers because he doesn't trust them.
'He said he wants generals like Hitler's generals. He said he wanted to execute Mark Milley, the former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. He fired General CQ Brown, the last chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, because he made a single remark involving racial dignity. He has no use for the military except as decoration of his own grandiosity.'
Critics say the display of pomp and pageantry is wasteful, especially as Trump slashes costs throughout the federal government, and represents an effort to link his projection of power with military authority. Public opposition will be expressed in more than 2,000 protest events all over the country under the rubric 'No Kings'.
Organisers say they will not be hosting an event in Washington because they do not want the birthday parade to be the centre of gravity. Instead a major flagship march and rally will be held in Philadelphia, the cradle of US democracy.
Even so, thousands of agents, officers and specialists from law enforcement agencies from across the country will descend on Washington. Security preparations include Secret Service drones, 18.5 miles of anti-scale fencing, 17 miles of concrete barriers, 175 magnetometers and officers from federal, state and local agencies standing guard.
Officials said the Secret Service was tracking nine possible demonstrations in Washington and was ready to respond if they turn violent. Matt McCool, US Secret Service special agent in charge, told a press briefing on Monday: 'That will be handled swiftly.'
The army expects as many as 200,000 people could attend and that putting on the celebration will cost an estimated $25m to $45m. That includes the parade itself as well as the cost of moving equipment and housing and feeding the troops. It excludes costs the city of Washington will have to bear, such as trash cleanup, although the army has said it will pay for any unexpected repairs.
Democrats argue that Trump is taking over the army's birthday for himself. Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Senate armed services committee, told the Reuters news agency: 'This is Trump. This is all about his ego and making everything 'him', which is, I think, a discredit to the military, the army.'
Military parades in the US are generally rare, although Presidents Harry Truman and John F Kennedy's inaugurations featured displays of equipment. In 1991 tanks and thousands of troops, led by Gen Norman Schwarzkopf, paraded through Washington to celebrate the ousting of the Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's army from Kuwait in the Gulf war.
Trump has made no secret of his desire to hold military parades. During his first administration, he ordered the Pentagon to look into a display of military might after a 2017 trip to France where he and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, reviewed that country's defense forces marching down the Avenue des Champs-Elysées in Paris.
Trump subsequently told reporters: 'It was one of the greatest parades I've ever seen. It was two hours on the button, and it was military might, and I think a tremendous thing for France and for the spirit of France.'
He previewed: 'We're going to have to try to top it.'
But the Pentagon had other ideas. Jim Mattis, Trump's first defence secretary, compared the idea to Soviet Union-like displays of authoritarian power and privately remarked, 'I'd rather swallow acid,' according to Holding the Line, a 2019 book by Guy Snodgrass, a retired navy pilot and former Mattis aide.
Trump ultimately settled for a display of tanks and other armoured vehicles during an independence day celebration in Washington on 4 July 2019. Nearly six years later, however, Trump will get his way now that the likes of Mattis have been succeeded by devout loyalists such as the current defence secretary, Pete Hegseth.
Wilson of the Lincoln Project said: 'This is one more example that there is no adult in the room with Trump. There are no guardrails. There are no restraints. There are no wiser heads and quieter voices. It is all now what would you like, Mr President, and we shall deploy it.'
He added: 'It's a birthday present for Donald Trump at a time when we're told we have to cut rural hospitals and cut Medicare and Medicaid. It certainly plays to his ego and his character and I don't think we should have expected anything less than this. This is what he was going to get because there are no restraints on Trump's behaviour by his own staff and his own team.'