Trump suggests his arch will house drones, snipers, ammunition

Josh Wingrove, Bloomberg News on Sep 20, 2026

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President Donald Trump suggested he would modify plans for a large triumphal arch in the capital by including staging areas for U.S. military snipers and to launch drones.

The idea appears to be Trump’s latest attempt to sell the idea of building a towering arch, which has spurred questions about whether it would dwarf Washington, D.C.’s other memorials or pose a risk to air travel.

In a social media post on Sunday, Trump called it a “Military Complex/Triumphal Arch” and said it would “house, store, and have the rapid ability to use large numbers of drones, plus Snipers, on both the roof and plaza areas, and additionally have and hold large quantities of sniper ammunition in storage.”

It wasn’t immediately clear what prompted the post, how significantly that would alter the planned design or scale, or how serious the president is about the idea. The post echoed Trump’s push to build a White House ballroom, where the president began emphasizing military use of the new facility, which he has said will also include a rooftop drone port.

More broadly, Trump has spent much of his second term trying to put a more permanent stamp on the capital.

Trump is pushing to build the arch in Memorial Circle, which sits between Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial, and near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, raising safety questions, though the Federal Aviation Administration has cleared the project as long as it has safety lighting.

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