President Donald Trump will reportedly sign an executive order on Friday that will officially change the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War.
The agency’s name was changed to the Department of Defense following the end of World War II.
White House officials confirmed the name change to Fox News Digital on Thursday.
Both the president and his Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, have advocated for the name change. The rebranding is part of the Trump administration’s “warrior ethos” campaign in the Pentagon.
Other actions Hegseth has taken in pursuit of his “warrior ethos” include banning books at military bases, ordering a name change for the USNS Harvey Milk — an iconic leader in LGBT history who was also a Navy lieutenant — and changing the name of Fort Liberty back to Fort Bragg, which was named after Confederate General Braxton Bragg.
In addition to changing the Department of Defense’s name, the executive order will also reportedly change titles associated with the position. Hegseth will no longer be the Secretary of Defense, but the Secretary of War.
According to White House officials who spoke to the outlet, Trump’s order will instruct Hegseth to pursue legislative and executive actions that will make the name change permanent.
Trump has mentioned the name change several times in the last month.
“Everybody likes that we had an unbelievable history of victory when it was Department of War,” he told reporters on August 25. “Then we changed it to Department of Defense.”
Hegseth echoed Trump’s line of thinking — that America won more conflicts under the Department of War than it did under the Department of Defense — during an interview with Fox & Friends on Wednesday.
“We won WWI, and we won WWII, not with the Department of Defense, but with a War Department — with the Department of War,” he said. “As the president has said, we’re not just defense, we’re offense.”
He continued, saying he wants “folks that understand how to exact lethality on the enemy” at the Pentagon.
“We don’t want endless contingencies and just playing defense. We think words and names and titles matter. So we’re working with the White House and the president on it,” he said.
The U.S. used the Department of War name until 1949. It was then changed to the Department of Defense as part of a series of federal reforms that included the National Security Act, which was passed in 1947.
