On Display at D.C.’s Parade: Tanks, Drones and the Military’s Identity Crisis

On Saturday, for the first time in more than 30 years, the U.S. military is holding a big parade. The event is intended to celebrate the 250th birthday of the Army and to remind Americans of their debt to men and women in uniform. “We want to show off a little bit,” said President Trump.

But the spectacle of Abrams tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles and more than 6,000 marching soldiers will do more than display the awesome powers of the Army. It will also bring into focus a range of challenges facing the armed forces in future conflicts.

The Army is scrambling to keep pace with the changing nature of warfare, as expensive, old-fashioned military hardware becomes increasingly vulnerable to attack by cheap, off-the-shelf drones. There are personnel issues too. In two of the past three years, the Army has missed its recruitment goals, and surveys find that the public’s faith in the armed forces has ebbed.

The parade also arrives at a tense moment in civil-military relations, with President Trump deploying Marines and federalized National Guard troops to Los Angeles to quell protests and riots over the administration’s deportation policies. Trump’s actions, in the face of objections from California officials, have put at risk the military’s status as an apolitical institution, serving the Constitution and the country rather than a president or party.

Evidence of the technological challenge facing the military has been on dramatic display lately. Just hours before the parade in Washington, D.C., Israel used explosive drones it had smuggled into Iran to take out the country’s air defenses ahead of attacks by Israeli jets. Two weeks ago, in a similar operation, low-cost Ukrainian drones were able to destroy Russian strategic bombers. And the Houthis, the rebel combatants in Yemen, have kept America’s naval fleet off-balance with cheap missiles and drones , hampering U.S. efforts to protect busy Red Sea shipping lanes.

Much of what Americans will see Saturday will be a retrospective of military might, centered on hulking equipment weighing millions of tons. The parade will include 26 Abrams tanks, 27 Bradley Fighting Vehicles and 27 Strykers—the armored fighting vehicles that protected troops as they maneuvered through the streets of Iraq after the 2003 invasion.

Members of the U.S Army sit atop M1A2 Abrams tank near the Washington Monument, ahead of the upcoming U.S. Army 250th anniversary celebration parade, in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 13, 2025. REUTERS/Nathan Howard

The two Sherman tanks that will pass through Washington were among the thousands used during World War II. The flyover will include a B-25 Mitchell bomber that also saw service in that war. The Army will fly Huey helicopters that ferried troops to the front lines in Vietnam and Apaches that provided cover for ground forces in the first Gulf War, which liberated Kuwait.

That the equipment reflects the war fighting of previous generations highlights another uncomfortable reality for the military. The last big parade of this kind was a celebration of the victory by the U.S. and its allies in the first Gulf War, in 1991. The U.S. hasn’t won a major war since then.

“To go marching down Constitution Avenue looks like you’ve just won something,’’ said Lawrence Ko r b, an assistant secretary of defense under President Reagan. “Unfortunately, the way things have been going, it’s been pretty tough for our military to achieve its objectives lately.”

The 21st century has been defined by the “forever wars” in the Mideast, including the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan after two decades, only to allow the Taliban to return to power within hours. That recent history is likely one reason that public confidence in the military, while higher than for most other U.S. institutions, hit its lowest level in more than 25 years in 2023 and 2024, Gallup found.

Trump is having none of that, saying instead that America should celebrate its military superiority. As he told soldiers this week at Fort Bragg, N.C., the Army’s largest installation, “Our army has smashed foreign empires, humbled kings, toppled tyrants and hunted terrorist savages through the very gates of hell.”

The parade will also contain glimpses of where the U.S. military is headed. The Army will have drones, satellites and night vision goggles on display near the parade route—smaller and cheaper equipment than the military deployed in previous wars. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wants the Army to enable AI-driven command and control at certain headquarters within two years, and to extend advanced manufacturing, including 3-D printing, to operational units even sooner.

The Army has said it is seeking to learn lessons from Ukraine, where Ukrainian forces found new ways to use low-cost and expendable technology to defeat Russian troops with bigger and seemingly better equipment. It is looking to invest more in drones and in upgraded communications networks, so that different parts of the military can talk to one another on the battlefield.

U.S. Army soldiers in workout gear walk along the National Mall, during preparations ahead of the upcoming U.S. Army 250th anniversary celebration parade, in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 13, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Perhaps the most endangered asset that will be on display Saturday is the U.S. military’s longtime status as an apolitical institution, one that serves the Constitution and the country rather than the interests of the president or a general.

Saturday happens to be Trump’s 79th birthday. In an accident of history, June 14 is also the date in 1775 that the Continental Congress created the Army to prosecute the Revolutionary War. To some critics, the date chosen for the parade conflates the celebration of military service with a celebration of Trump himself, who is expected to view the parade from a reviewing stand and preside over the swearing-in ceremony for 250 new and re-enlisting soldiers.

Trump has pushed for a military parade since early in his first term, when he was wowed on a visit to Paris by the spectacle of the French military marching on Bastille Day. At the time, military leaders slow-walked the idea to a dead-end. Now some former military officials say they wish the Army had picked a different date, to make sure the parade celebrates service members rather than Trump.

Hundreds of protests are scheduled across the country to coincide with the parade, led by groups calling for nonviolent opposition to the Trump administration. The protests, under the label “No Kings,’ ’ reflect the concern that Trump is using the military to augment his own image and advance his political goals.

George Washington, for one, was skeptical of creating a large standing army, saying it “hath ever been considered dangerous to the liberties of a country.” But for two and a half centuries (with the exception of the Civil War), the nonpartisan status of the armed forces has made it possible for Americans to rally around the military’s mission irrespective of their political leanings.

“It’s a testament to the strength of the Army’s nonpartisanship and subordination to civilian rule that it’s endured for 250 years and hasn’t posed the threat to liberty that many of the framers feared it might,” said Heidi Urben, a retired Army colonel who deployed to Afghanistan twice in her 23-year-career.

Last month, however, Trump wore his trademark Make America Great Again hat when addressing graduates at West Point. His partisan speech at Fort Bragg this week had service members in uniform booing Trump’s political adversaries, including Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of California. Both were a breach of traditional decorum.

Protesters are detained after breaking through barrier fencing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 13, 2025. REUTERS/Nathan Howard

William Wechsler, a deputy assistant defense secretary for special operations under former President Barack Obama , said Trump’s use of the military in Los Angeles reinforces concerns about how Americans will understand the parade.

“If the intended message is that we should all appreciate how important the Army has been, that’s a great message,” he said. “If the message is the Army is a political tool and doesn’t have allegiance to the Constitution but to the ‘dear leader,’ that’s a terrible message.”

Given events in Los Angeles, Wechsler said, “the risk is the slow-but-steady unraveling of the incredibly valuable and potentially fragile nature of the relationship between the soldier and the United States, which we’ve had for 250 years.”

Wechsler, who is now with the Atlantic Council, a foreign policy think tank, and other former defense and military officials said that the administration could have taken steps to ensure that people don’t conflate the Army with the president, such as holding the parade outside Washington.

Some have pointed out that displays of military power are more common in autocratic nations, such as North Korea. “There’s a reason that dictators and authoritarians enjoy having big military parades,” said Janessa Goldbeck, a retired Marine who is now a senior adviser to Vote Vets, a progressive veterans’ organization. “The Army deserves to be celebrated. But this just feels and looks very much like the celebration of a man and not the Constitution and the principles enshrined in it.”

To many who support Trump, it was former President Joe Biden who injected partisanship into the military by infusing it with a “woke” ideology, which they say made the military lower its standards in a bid for a more diverse force. Some also point out that Biden stationed two uniformed Marines behind him during a partisan 2022 speech in which he condemned Trump and “MAGA Republicans” as extremists who undermine democracy.

Kori Schake, whose government service includes a senior National Security Council post under former President George W. Bush , said that Trump’s genius for showmanship could make the parade a patriotic celebration, giving new visibility to the military among a public that has little contact with service members.

“The strongest correlate for someone joining the American military is familiarity with it—a family member or friend who’s in service, or living in or around a military base,” said Schake, who is now with the right-of-center American Enterprise Institute.

People hold a banner which reads ‘Happy Birthday President Trump’ as preparations continue ahead of the upcoming U.S. Army 250th anniversary celebration parade, near the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 13, 2025. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

The Army met only 75% of its recruitment goals in 2022 and 2023. It says 50% of young adults know little or nothing about military service, and that a shockingly high 71% aren’t eligible to enlist due to obesity, drug use or aptitude.

Nonetheless, recruitment has begun to rebound, and the Army met its goal in fiscal year 2025. A pay raise that Biden signed into law in his last days in office likely helped. So did a recently established program that allows prospective soldiers to train if they can’t initially meet fitness or academic standards.

It’s not yet clear how recruitment will be affected by Trump and Hegseth’s efforts to rid the military of diversity efforts, which they say have hampered its core war-fighting mission. The administration has removed a number of women from top-ranking posts, including the first women to lead the Navy and Coast Guard. The president also fired a Black Air Force general, CQ Brown Jr., as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest-ranking military officer.

Yet drawing on the full spectrum of American society has been key to the military’s recruitment efforts. Some 46% of soldiers are Black, Latino or from other minority groups, and more than 15% are women, the Army reported in 2022. For many who enlist, military service provides important skills and a ladder to the middle class.

Hegseth says that shunning diversity efforts and focusing on a return to basics—physical fitness, a single qualification standard for all troops, and the lethality of the armed forces—is bringing in new recruits . “If they wanted to get a woke indoctrination, they could just go to college,” he said at a congressional hearing this week. “Instead, they’re joining the military.”