President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday renaming the Department of Defense to the Department of War.
“This is something we thought long and hard about. We’ve been talking about it for months,” Trump said as he was signing the order in the Oval Office.
“I think it’s a much more appropriate name, especially in light of where the world is right now,” he said.
“We have the strongest military in the world. We have the greatest equipment in the world. We have the greatest manufacturers of equipment by far. There’s nobody to even compete,” he added.
A department revamp
The Defense Department was originally named the Department of War under President George Washington in 1789. In 1947, the department split into the Department of the Army and the Department of the Air Force and joined the Department of the Navy when President Harry Truman signed the National Security Act to form the National Military Establishment. It was renamed the Department of Defense in 1949.
Trump’s order will restore the name to the Department of War, which he said in previous remarks was the name when the United States won World War I, World War II and “everything.” He said the department’s title including “defense” doesn’t “sound good” to him and he wants the United States to go back to the Department of War, which has a “stronger sound.”
“Defense? I don’t want to be defense only. We want defense but we want offense, too,” Trump said.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is on board with the name change, which would make his title the secretary of War. In previous comments to the press, Hegseth said “words matter, titles matter, cultures matter.”
Hegseth joined Trump in the Oval Office for the order’s signing and said the change isn’t solely about renaming the department, but is about “restoring the warrior ethos” and victory.
“We’re going to go on offense, not just on defense, maximum lethality, not tepid legality, violent effect, not politically correct,” Hegseth said. “We’re going to raise up warriors, not just defenders.”
The name change comes as Trump has repeatedly said he is against war and wants to see fighting across the globe come to a halt. He’s successfully negotiated ends to conflicts in Asia and Africa, and has been in continued talks with Russia and Ukraine to end the more than three-year war. The president has sought peace between the two countries by hosting talks and has long criticized former President Joe Biden for the foreign conflicts beginning under his administration.
Trump said he thinks the name change sends a message of victory and strength to both allies and adversaries. He argued that he’s achieved peace because of the strength of the U.S. military.
The deals secured so far in his second term wouldn’t have happened without the pressure of U.S. trade and military strength, Trump said.
Sen. Mike Lee is working on congressional approval
The order, which the president had hinted about for weeks, will need authorization from Congress. Trump has expressed confidence that he wouldn’t run into an issue with either chamber to get the department renamed.
“We’re just going to do it,” he said previously. “I’m sure Congress will go along if we need that.”
On Friday, he questioned if Congress would be needed to legally change the name and said that’s why he was signing the executive order. He said he would put it before Congress but is “going with it very strongly.”
While Trump’s name change would need to be passed officially though an act of Congress, it may not be difficult to do.
Utah Sen. Mike Lee has publicly expressed support for changing the department name and said he was drafting a bill to restore the original name, which he said captures the “full range of America’s military capabilities.”
Lee said Trump’s “return to tradition” is enough to change the name, but he also believes the Department of War is a better descriptor of what American forces do, “wage war when necessary and defeat our enemies.”
“As Congress originally changed the name of the War Department in 1947, Senator Lee is proud to support President Trump’s return to tradition by leading the Department of War Restoration Act in Congress, which would codify the name in federal law,” Lee’s spokesperson said in a statement to The Deseret News.
It’s not known how much a name change for the department will cost, but analysts have noted that it could come with a large price tag to update signage and other materials used in the Pentagon, bases across the country and in installations around the world.
It comes as the Trump administration spent the first several months back in office with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) trying to scale back federal spending.
Trump proposed in June that the Defense Department be given a $1.01 trillion budget for the 2026 fiscal year, a more than $119 billion increase from the previous fiscal year. The department currently operates on a budget of more than $841 billion and employs more than 3 million people.