WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump will sign an executive order Friday adding “Department of War” as the secondary title of the Defense Department, two White House officials told NBC News.
The order, which Trump is expected to sign in the Oval Office, won’t rename the Defense Department, but it will authorize Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to use secondary titles like “secretary of war” and “Department of War” in official correspondence and public communications and during formal ceremonies, according to a White House preview of the order.
Trump will require all executive departments and agencies to “recognize and accommodate these secondary titles in internal and external communications.”
Officially changing the department’s name would require congressional approval. Congress established it as the War Department in 1789.
President Harry Truman oversaw the name change of the Department of War to the National Military Establishment after he signed the National Security Act of 1947, which organized all military services into a single organization led by a secretary of defense. Before then, the Department of War, the Navy and the Air Force operated separately.
In 1949, the National Security Act was amended to change the name of the new agency from the National Military Establishment to the Department of Defense amid concerns that the abbreviations of the previous name (NME) sounded too 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.
The Department of War, Trump said in the Oval Office last month, “had a stronger sound” and an “unbelievable history of victory” attached to it, pointing to American victories in World Wars I and II.
“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.
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