CRACKPOTS 36: JASPER CRAVEN IN DC (Patreon)

Hello it's Brace...Jasper Craven is doing a guest newsletter for us about his experience at the DC military parade. You might remember him from Episode 403: GUARD CARD. he is a writer, you can check him out at BATTLEBORNE, his substack...Perhaps this all takes one some new significance with the strikes in Iran. I hope at least the Jody's got their dingers rocking while their husbands were glomping around the Chocolate City.

President Donald Trump’s combination birthday party/military parade was in the final stages of planning mode when death filled the air. For weeks, troop divisions from across the country had been preparing at a breakneck pace to celebrate the Army’s 250th birthday, and Trump’s. Soldiers were brushing up on military tunes, practicing marches, and arranging tank runs and flyovers. Some were also sourcing period era costumes from Hollywood.

Fort Campbell, in Kentucky, was playing an especially active roll, poised to send 500 troops to Washington D.C., plus a good deal of hardware. While the fort’s exact inventory list is unavailable, the parade itself was set to include pack of AH-64 Apache helicopters, which would buzz low past the Washington Monument.

Four days before the parade, a 40-year-old Army helicopter pilot at Campbell named Dustin Wright was killed in an Apache. Another pilot was wounded. In its initial statement, released early Friday, the Army reported that Wright’s death had occurred in "preparation” for the parade. Hours later, however, the force changed its tune, asserting instead that Wright and his crew were “not in direct support” of the celebration.

I deployed to the swamp that next morning, unable to shake the feeling that Trump’s birthday had blood on its hands. I was further puzzled why America was set to lionize some of the most prolific killers of American troops in a generation. Of the 19,378 servicemembers who died during the Global War on Terror, more than 6,000 of them — or 32 percent — perished due to training accidents, most of which involved military vehicles and other heavy equipment. In the years since we left the Middle East, accidents have continued to tick up, with Army Aviation recently reporting its highest “Class A” mishap rate since 2008. Now, the president and a throng of red-blooded Americans were set to honor these deadly machines. 

When I first arrived on the National Mall, I chugged a Phorm Energy – a drink newly released and freely distributed as part of a special collaboration between UFC CEO Dana White and Anheuser-Busch. White and other sponsors were given front-row seats the parade. Some firms were also provided booths to hawk their wares. For a few minutes, I watched the Robot Dogs from Boston Dynamics pick up balls and bow before onlookers. Nearby, people utilized an Army-themed cornhole set. Not far from there, Bell Textron had displayed prototype of its new long-range assault copter: the MV-75. 

It was blisteringly hot out, so I sought out the only air-conditioning available to the public: a blacked-out trailer where soldiers offered short demonstrations of night vision technology. I stopped sweating as I stared through a green phosphorous scope. I then tried to prolong my time in the cool box, asking a soldier, “How long has this technology existed?” He curtly said, “the 1970s,” then whisked us out the door. I looked it up later, and it was actually 1929. 

Before the parade began, I walked to Trump’s black-and-gold viewing stand in front of the White House, which was flanked by two static tanks. Then I continued along Constitution Avenue to the U.S. Institute of Peace, eager for the irresistible contrast of soldiers, guns, and tanks backgrounded by a putatively pacifist think tank which DOGE is trying to shutter. 

The parade that followed featured a litany of the military’s most famous contemporary pieces — including the Stryker tank and the Black Hawk helicopter, plus some lame drones — as well as older equipment, much of it on loan from private collectors. This cache included Huey helicopters from the Vietnam War and Jackson tanks from World War II. 

***

Last Memorial Day, I was hungover in the hull gunner of a Jackson, sweating again, but this time in central Massachusetts. My tank was operated by a retired Army mechanic named Mike who worked behalf of the Collings Foundation, a well-heeled nonprofit that is among the world’s biggest private holders of military armaments. Mike playfully navigated me and a few other patrons around a large dirt track, spitting up soil and making the earth shake. I thought briefly of the terrified young GIs who navigated foggy European fields in this creaky armored beast. Then I took out my phone, stuck out my tongue, and took a selfie.

At this point, I’d been investigating the allure and dangers of heavy military equipment for years. In stories published with Mother Jones and the military news site Task & Purpose, I scrutinized the collectors who’ve quietly amassed insane firepower thanks to an obscure Pentagon loophole that allows heavy weapons transfers to citizens who’ve formed non-profit military museums. This crew includes a Microsoft co-founder, a member of the Wal-Mart empire, and a construction magnate-slash-long-time member of the Bohemian Club. Also, the owner of the Jelly Belly Candy Company, who tried (and failed) to modify one of his tanks to fire jellybeans. Some of these characters are likely in violation of federal arms laws, but the government has brushed off attempts to rein them in, apparently viewing them as harmless fans – the rich pining for static toys.

Sometimes, however, they’ve been involved in active situations. During the 2017 mass shootings in Las Vegas, for instance, a local MAGA Sheriff named Joe Lombardo called upon the military museum operators at Battlefield Vegas for help. They quickly deployed staff and four armored military vehicles to the scene. The museum’s owner, Ron Cheney, and his wife, Karla, later donated more than $10,000 to Lombardo’s 2022 gubernatorial campaign, which he won.

There are shady backwoods operators, too, including amateur mechanics and pyrotechnic geniuses. This pack includes Cheney’s longtime mechanic, “Dangerous” Bob Bigando, who lost half his pinky finger to a .50 Cal in 2004.  In 2007, according to court documents, Bigando was indicted on federal charges of transporting illegal explosives, including 4 tons of an artillery propellant, to “unlicensed” buyers. A plea agreement reduced the charges to misdemeanors involving possession of the materials and temporarily curtailed Bigando’s right to bear arms, but he was deemed in violation the following year, after agents from the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives caught him with an unlicensed howitzer he hoped to refurbish. He later told me that the howitzer was later returned to him. 

While recently scanning a state-by-state inventory of civilian-owned military equipment – which anyone can check out here — I discovered that a private citizen located 30 miles from my rural Vermont hometown owns an M3 Stuart tank.

Many of these items are demilitarized, but not all of them. For decades, the Pentagon and Congress have waived demilitarization regulations for well-connected operators, and failed to conduct basic oversight for all the others, leading many to quietly tweak their pieces back to life. 

A 2006 Congressional investigation identified U.S. military museums as the Pentagon’s “most significant source of (weapons) leakage.” Watchdogs continue to uncover potentially dangerous items that have improperly found their way into the civilian market, including machine guns, howitzers, and helicopters. In one case, an Air Force surplus office in Georgia lost track of $39 million worth of material. 

Much of the equipment is funneled into the black market. Some items that have been shipped off to military museums have later caused injury and death — especially if the equipment was old, faulty, or sketchily operated. Recent fatal incidents include a case in 2016 when the Jelly Belly chairman’s tank ran over and killed a man during a family reunion. In 2019, a defective B-17 bomber owned by the Collings Foundation crashed in Connecticut, leaving the pilot, co-pilot, and five passengers dead.

***

The parade was a perfect showcase for the old guard of the military industrial complex, the firms like Boeing and Lockheed that build things. But there was also plenty of military tech money swashing around, with sponsors including Oracle, Coinbase, Amazon, and Palantir, whose CTO recently enlisted in the Army Reserve’s newly formed “Executive Innovation Corps.”

The software these business build can’t crack and crush people, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be fatal consequences. Palantir, for instance, is developing targeting systems and massive surveillance tools powered by data and AI – work that’s netted them hundreds of millions of dollars. These and other Palantir projects recently led a band of ex-employees to write an open letter criticizing the company for being “complicit” in authoritarianism.”

Once I’d seen my fair share of tanks creaking down Constitution Avenue, I walked south towards Washington’s war monuments, but found that they were all inaccessible, separated from the crowd by anti-scaling fencing guarded by Secret Service agents. Today was about the gear, I reminded myself, not the G.I.S. 

Two days later, as Army officials were withdrawing their forces and equipment from the capital, a 39-year-old woman was hit by a truck hauling a tank out of D.C., and killed. "The accident did not involve any soldiers nor military personnel," an Army source insisted to CBS. "The Army extends condolences to the family."