Among the many culture war policies Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has pursued, there is one goal that has so far officially eluded his grasp: changing the name of the Department of Defense to the “Department of War.”
Doing so, however, would cost taxpayers as much as $125 million, according to a new report released by the Congressional Budget Office on Wednesday.
To date, Congress has declined to take up the cause Mr. Hegseth has championed. That legislative body would need to write and pass a law making the name change official and legally binding.
The report noted that the Pentagon, which is led by Mr. Hegseth, refused to respond to the congressional office’s queries about how much money the department had already spent — and intended to spend in the future — pursuing the name change.
President Trump signed an executive order in September telling executive branch agencies to begin using the “Department of War” name, which he said “just sounded better.”
“Defense,” Mr. Trump said, was too politically correct of a term.
Congress must pass legislation approving the switch for the name change to be legal, and the defense bill signed by the president in December did not address the issue.
“Instead of prioritizing bringing down the costs of groceries or health care, Trump and his cronies are focused on vanity projects like renaming the Department of Defense,” Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon and one of the two senators who requested the C.B.O. study, said in a statement. “This move is performative government at its worst and does nothing to advance the national security or help service members and their families.”
According to the report, a “modest implementation” of the name change would probably cost taxpayers $10 million. But that figure could shoot to $125 million or more if the Pentagon rushed to discard all items emblazoned with the Department of Defense name in favor of the newer moniker.
The last round of name changes in the Defense Department began during the Biden administration.
In 2021, Congress passed legislation requiring the Defense Department to change the names of Pentagon assets named for Confederate Army soldiers who fought against the United States to preserve slavery and white supremacy.
The next year, a commission created to evaluate the new names for the military’s ships, streets and buildings estimated that renaming them would cost $21 million, the report said, but a year later, that estimate nearly doubled to $39 million.
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All told, the final cost of the congressionally mandated name changes was pegged around $62.5 million, the report said.
Upon becoming defense secretary, Mr. Hegseth embarked on a campaign to change the names of Army bases to honor U.S. soldiers with the same last names as the Confederate officers whose names had been removed.
In testimony before the Senate in June, he described eliminating Confederate names as “erasing history.”
The idea of renaming the Defense Department was not an issue discussed publicly by government officials until Mr. Hegseth suggested doing so in a book he published in 2024, and even then, it remained on the fringes of right-wing online discourse until he took office.
The War Department name was used by the federal government for roughly 150 years until it was changed to the Department of Defense shortly after World War II as a way to signal potential adversaries that the United States preferred peace to conflict.
After Mr. Trump’s executive order, Mr. Hegseth explained why he thought the name change would have value.
“Maximum lethality, not tepid legality; violent effect, not politically correct,” Mr. Hegseth said.
On Nov. 13, the Pentagon posted a photo of Mr. Hegseth using a hand tool to secure a new bronze plaque bearing the name “Department of War” at one of the building’s two main entrances.
“We want everybody who comes through this door to know that we are deadly serious about the name change of this organization,” he said at the time.
Just how much those new bronze plaques cost — as well as how much the Pentagon has spent to date to change signs, displays, memorabilia and websites — is unclear given the department’s refusal to provide data to Congress or the public on the matter.
John Ismay is a reporter covering the Pentagon for The Times. He served as an explosive ordnance disposal officer in the U.S. Navy.
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