The Army's 250th anniversary celebration, which falls on the president's birthday, has been criticized as an expensive vanity event that projects authoritarianism. But such parades are not without precedent.
Trains are arriving in Maryland this week loaded with military tanks that traveled more than 1,500 miles from Fort Cavazos, Texas. Flatbed trucks will haul them to Washington, DC, for the Army's 250th anniversary celebration on June 14, which falls on the same day as President Donald Trump's 79th birthday.
More than two dozen M1 Abrams tanks - each weighing more than 60 tons - are slated to parade down Constitution Avenue near the White House in a procession that until recently was not part of the Army's programming. They'll be accompanied by scores of infantry fighting vehicles and heavy artillery weaponry, plus some 6,600 soldiers as helicopters fly overhead.
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