WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump will enact an executive order on Friday to incorporate “Department of War” as an alternate designation for the Defense Department, according to two White House officials who spoke with NBC News.
This order, which Trump is slated to sign in the Oval Office, will not alter the official name of the Defense Department. However, it will permit Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to utilize secondary titles such as “secretary of war” and “Department of War” for official documentation, public statements, and ceremonial events, based on a White House briefing of the directive.
Trump will mandate that all executive departments and agencies “acknowledge and incorporate these secondary titles in their internal and external communications.”
Fox News first reported on the executive order.
Officially changing the department’s name would require congressional approval. Congress established it as the War Department in 1789.
President Harry Truman supervised the renaming of the Department of War to the National Military Establishment post his approval of the National Security Act of 1947, which unified all military branches under a singular leadership of a secretary of defense. Previously, the War Department operated independently from the Navy and the Air Force.
In 1949, the National Security Act was modified to rename the new entity from the National Military Establishment to the Department of Defense due to concerns that the old acronym (NME) was phonetically similar to “enemy.”
Trump’s order will instruct Hegseth to recommend legislative and executive actions to permanently revert the name to Department of War.
Trump had for months signaled an interest in changing the name to its 18th century iteration, decrying its current one as not bellicose enough.
According to Trump in a statement in the Oval Office last month, the “Department of War” had a “more authoritative resonance” and a “remarkable legacy of success,” citing U.S. triumphs in World Wars I and II as examples.
“I don’t want to be defense only. We want defense, but we want offense, too,” Trump said. “As Department of War, we won everything.”
Hegseth, whom Trump has previously addressed as the “secretary of war,” has been a vocal proponent of changing the name, as well. He said at a Cabinet meeting last month that it will help cement a “warrior ethos” in the department.
After a trip to Fort Benning, Georgia, on Thursday evening, Hegseth teased the formal rebrand upon his return to Washington.
“Thanks for traveling with the War Department,” Hegseth told the reporters who accompanied him.
