President Donald Trump said Monday that his administration is preparing to rename the Department of Defense as the Department of War, a change he suggested could take effect within the next week.
Trump said the Pentagon would “probably” revert to its earlier name, echoing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has pledged to restore what he calls the department’s “warrior ethos.” Both men have criticized the decision to drop the “War” designation in the mid-20th century.
The agency was originally known as the Department of War, created in 1789 to oversee the U.S. Army. In 1947, as part of the National Security Act, the department was reorganized, and in 1949 it was renamed the Department of Defense to reflect a post–World War II emphasis on unified military services and collective security rather than solely offensive combat operations.
If carried out, the move would represent the first time in more than 75 years that the Pentagon’s formal name has changed.
When “we won World War I, World War II, it was called the Department of War. And to me, that’s really what it is,” Trump said at a press event with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, per POLITICO. “Everybody likes that we had an unbelievable history of victory when it was Department of War. Then we changed it to Department of Defense.”
Trump has recently suggested the possibility of reverting the name back, referring to Hegseth as his “Secretary of War” during a NATO summit in June. He indicated that political correctness was the reason for the switch.“If you look at the old building next to the White House, you can see where it used to be the Secretary of War,” he said. “Then we became politically correct and they called it Secretary of Defense.”
Some believe that the name change is imminent, though they add Trump would likely need congressional approval since the department’s current name was mandated by the Legislative Branch. “I don’t want to be defense only,” Trump said in the Oval Office earlier Monday. “We want offense too.”
