The year-long effort will culminate next weekend with a few lingering uncertainties, including how many spectators will show up.
On June 12, 2024, a day when Joe Biden was still President, running for reelection, and had every expectation of serving a second term, the US Army filed a permit in the hopes of celebrating its 250th birthday on the National Mall the following year.
The event would involve as many as 300 soldiers and civilian personnel. There would be a concert by the US Army Band. Four cannons would be fired. Some 120 chairs would be set up.
All told, it would be a fairly modest affair, another event on a summer’s day on the national lawn, a few weeks before Fourth of July festivities would bring a much grander display.
Then President Donald Trump was elected - and plans for the day changed dramatically.
More than two dozen tanks will now roll through Washington DC, and 50 helicopters will fly overhead. Thousands of troops, many in period costume from past wars, will participate, and several musical acts will perform.
All told, it amounts to the grandest event since Trump took office for his second term, a spectacle that federal government and military officials have maneuvered to fulfil an ambitious and grandiose vision for celebrating the country and its military.
The large-scale military parade is the result of a confluence of interests: a president who has long pushed for the kind of grand pageant he’d witnessed in other countries, and a military that is now willing to show off its might.
For a president who loves crowds, who relishes big displays of heavy equipment and whose inauguration was pushed indoors because of cold weather, everything has fallen in place for an event set to take place on June 14 - Trump’s 79th birthday. The Pentagon is now under the control of loyalists, and the guardrails previously in place are gone.
There is also a more obvious reason to hold a parade now: the Army’s 250th anniversary.
“The Army was pushing on an unlocked door,” said a US official familiar with the parade planning efforts, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
The year-long effort, and the growing ambition of the past few months, will culminate one week after Trump’s controversial decision to send in National Guard troops in California to quell protests over his immigration policies. On Tuesday, Trump threatened to deploy the military if additional anti-ICE protests erupt elsewhere in the country; he also said he would consider military action if protests pop up over the parade.
There are other lingering uncertainties: how many people will show up, whether Democratic “No Kings” protests planned across the country will dampen enthusiasm for the main event, and whether it will live up to the president’s expectations.
A long-standing love of parades
Eight years ago during his first term, Trump went to France and stood with President Emmanuel Macron to watch that nation’s July 14 Bastille Day celebration. French troops marched down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, and military tanks and armoured vehicles rumbled along. Fighter jets painted the sky with blue, white and red smoke while flying over the Arc de Triomphe.
He told aides afterwards that he wanted something similar at home.
“It was one of the greatest parades I’ve ever seen,” Trump told reporters two months later when meeting Macron at the United Nations. “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.”
And then he had a boast: “We’re going to have to try to top it.”
In 2018, his public and private musings about a military parade became more of a presidential directive. Pentagon officials began trying to figure out how they could pull it off.
Even before taking office, he had wanted to find ways to showcase American military might.
“We’re going to show the people as we build up our military,” Trump said in an interview with The Washington Post before his first inauguration in January 2017. “That military may come marching down Pennsylvania Avenue. That military may be flying over New York City and Washington DC for parades. I mean, we’re going to be showing our military.”
But the idea had long been viewed as cost-prohibitive and not necessary for a global superpower. It also ran against an American tradition of avoiding public displays of martial strength more common in authoritarian regimes, such as the former Soviet Union’s Red Square celebrations or North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s penchant for showing off his country’s missiles.
Still, President Harry S. Truman’s 1949 inauguration parade featured military equipment, as did President John F. Kennedy’s in 1961. President George H.W. Bush oversaw a parade in 1991 celebrating victory in the first Persian Gulf War, with General H. Norman Schwarzkopf leading 8800 veterans of Operation Desert Storm down Constitution Avenue.
But Trump, in his first term, never got his parade. Officials at the Pentagon wanted to keep away from politics. Jim Mattis, Trump’s first defence secretary, said it would “harken back to Soviet Union-like displays of authoritarian power” but said he would look into it, according to Holding the Line, a 2019 book by a former Mattis aide and retired Navy pilot, Guy Snodgrass.
In private, Snodgrass recalled in his book, Mattis was more blunt in his opposition: “I’d rather swallow acid.”
Mattis, who has previously voiced disappointment in Snodgrass for violating his trust, declined to comment. After Mattis resigned in December 2018, Trump held a grandiose “Salute to America” in Washington with military flyovers - but still no parade.
An idea that started with the Army
The Army usually celebrates its birthday with a festival at the National Museum of the United States Army, across the Potomac River at Fort Belvoir, near George Washington’s Mount Vernon. The event typically features equipment displays, an aerial parachute demonstration and a performance by an Army band.
With the 250th anniversary coming in 2025, however, Army officials knew they wanted something with a little more pizzazz.
“The thinking was: let’s take the festival to the National Mall so that it’s easier for the public to participate,” said Paul Hadwiger, live events project manager at the US Army Military District of Washington.
General Randy George, the Army’s top officer, and his team began discussing how they might structure the event, said Colonel David Butler, a spokesman and adviser for the general.
The initial permit filed last year, which Butler said was submitted as a “foothold” to make sure something would happen, reflected the smaller-scale event initially envisioned. They estimated a maximum number of participants at 300, including soldiers and civilian personnel. They needed 10 portable restrooms, a stage and two jumbotrons.
“If it grew, it grew,” Hadwiger said. “But we didn’t know that it would.”
When Trump won the election, though, they had a sense that change was in the air.
White House officials say that Trump always wanted a grand celebration for the country’s 250th anniversary, and the parade is something of a kickoff to the wider series of events next year.
The week after he was inaugurated, he signed an executive order creating Task Force 250 to begin the planning.
By mid-February, Army officials went to the White House and made a bigger pitch to Trump administration officials: it was time, Army officials suggested, to hold a “national-level” event of some kind to mark the birthday.
Army officials were not initially sure whether Trump and senior White House advisers would be receptive to the idea.
When the pitch was greeted with enthusiasm, brainstorming began in earnest, with suggestions for a parade, fireworks, a performance by the Army’s Golden Knights parachute team and other demonstrations. The White House green-lit nearly all of the ideas, and Trump added some of his own.
“The president has requested aircraft and other military equipment to fully capture the might of our American military,” said a White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to provide detail on the planning. The official said that ever since Trump won in November, the plan was for a military parade to mark the Army’s anniversary.
George, a graduate of the US Military Academy at West Point, New York, who served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, has undertaken the project enthusiastically, Butler said.
“We’re treating it like any other operation, combat or otherwise,” Butler said, indicating that considerations must be paid to make sure the event has appropriate safety precautions and logistical support.
Two Army officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said in separate interviews that the service is aware of the connection that some critics have made to Trump’s birthday - and disappointed by it.
One of the officials said that early in the planning process at the White House, an Army official noted that the parade would occur on Trump’s birthday. But service officials left that meeting with the impression that Trump actually did not want his birthday highlighted, the Army official said.
Army officials said there were no plans to sing Happy Birthday to Trump or officially acknowledge his birthday during the parade.
“Never been brought up and not part of the plan,” said Colonel Chris Vitale, the officer overseeing the parade and other celebrations related to the Army’s 250th.
Trump, speaking on NBC’s Meet the Press last month, said that the event is “not for my birthday” but that there would be a “big, beautiful parade” to celebrate the military. Doing so, he said, would cost “peanuts compared to the value of doing it”.
“We have the greatest missiles in the world,” Trump said. “We have the greatest submarines in the world. We have the greatest Army tanks in the world. We have the greatest weapons in the world. And we’re going to celebrate it.”
The Army’s suggestion to hold a national event to mark its birthday coincided with the President and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth firing senior military officers early in the administration, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the top officers in the Navy and Coast Guard. Unofficial lists of other military leaders who could be fired circulated widely on Capitol Hill, with little clarity on whom Trump might target.
Butler, George’s spokesman, rejected any suggestion that the Army’s embrace of a military parade had anything to do with that.
“We’re on the record: no one was pitching a national event to save their job,” Butler said.
Under Trump, the vision grew
The celebration has continued to grow over recent months.
It now is expected to include 28 Abrams tanks, 28 Stryker combat vehicles, 28 Bradley Fighting Vehicles, an array of other vehicles and 6700 soldiers from across the country. The estimated cost is about $45 million (NZ$74.7m), Army officials have said - a flash point as the service cuts programmes to fund new Trump priorities. The Army has vowed to foot the bill for any damage to city streets, with local officials particularly worried they’ll be chewed up by tanks.
Reagan National Airport will halt takeoffs and landings for up to several hours, and waterways on the Potomac will be closed. The parade will take place along Constitution Avenue between 15th and 23rd streets.
On Friday, preparations were underway for the event. Crews along Constitution Avenue NW worked on what looked like a platform just south of the White House. A stage was under construction just off the Ellipse, the federally controlled park south of the White House.
It remains unclear how organisers are planning to build a crowd for the event.
Army spokesperson Cynthia Smith said they were using their website, social media, media coverage and partnerships with sports teams to drum up awareness.
“We’ve focused on the four-hour radius around DC. That is really where we are marketing,” Smith said, adding that participating Army units around the country are spreading the word in their own communities. She said the Army is also “partnering with third-party influencers”, but she was unable to provide a list of names because the computer system was down.
Recruitment ads have also popped up on the DC Metro saying: “Explore 250+ Army careers. Meet us June 14th on The National Mall.”
Destination DC, the city’s main tourism organisation, published an online FAQ guide to the 250th celebration. Tucked among guidance on Metro station closures, scheduling logistics and ticket information is the question, “Is this a political event?”
The response: “No. The celebration is focused on the Army’s 250 years of service to the country - not on politics. The day honours Soldiers past and present and highlights the Army’s role in American history.”
“President Trump is looking forward to celebrating the US Army’s birthday as part of the year-long celebration for America’s 250th anniversary,” said Anna Kelly, White House deputy press secretary. “This parade will honour all of the military men and women who have bravely served our country, including those who made the ultimate sacrifice to defend our freedom.”
While officials have downplayed Trump’s birthday, the president is expected to be at the centre of attention. The Golden Knights are planning to parachute onto the Ellipse and present an American flag to the president. Trump will also enlist and reenlist 250 recruits and soldiers.
Federal workers have been told to work remotely so that soldiers can sleep in their offices downtown. Flights will be delayed and streets blocked. There may be frustration in the air in some corners, but the tanks will soon be on their way.
- Dan Merica contributed to this report.