The White House on Thursday announced that US President
Donald Trump is renaming the department of defence to "department of war," fulfilling his long-standing wish of rebranding it to project a more powerful image.
White House, in an official statement, said that Trump will sign an executive order permitting use of the "department of war" as a "secondary title" for the sprawling department, as Congress establishes its official title.
According to Fox News, the move to formally restore the Pentagon's historic name, directing the department of Defence to be once again called the department of war is part of the administration's "warrior ethos" campaign.
It will make "department of war" a secondary title for the agency, with defence secretary Pete Hegseth adopting the title "secretary of war." A White House fact sheet says the order also instructs Hegseth to propose legislative and executive steps to make the change permanent.
The rebranding will extend beyond titles. A White House official said Pentagon websites and signage will be updated, including renaming the public affairs briefing room the "Pentagon War Annex." Longer-term changes are being planned.
Trump has teased the shift in recent days, telling reporters on August 25, "Everybody likes that we had an unbelievable history of victory when it was department of war. Then we changed it to department of defense."
Hegseth, who has already been introduced by Trump as "secretary of war," echoed the president's reasoning, calling the new name symbolic of a cultural shift. "We won WWI and WWII not with the department of defense, but with a war department," he said Wednesday on Fox & Friends. "We're not just defence, we're offence. Words and names and titles matter."
The department of war served as the nation's primary military authority until 1949, when Congress renamed it the department of defence under the National Security Act of 1947 as part of sweeping postwar reforms.
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