Washington — President Trump signed an executive order Friday to start the process of renaming the Department of Defense to the Department of War, restoring a name the agency last held in the late 1940s.
The executive order will allow the DOD to start using the term Department of War as a “secondary title,” and will let Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth use the title Secretary of War, according to a fact sheet obtained by CBS News. Other government agencies will be directed to “recognize and accommodate” those secondary titles.
The order also instructs Hegseth to recommend “legislative and executive actions” to make the renaming effort permanent. The Pentagon is currently officially referred to as the Department of Defense in federal law.
In remarks at the White House Friday afternoon, Mr. Trump said the post-World War II decision to name it the Department of Defense was “woke.”
The White House fact sheet argues the term Department of War “conveys a stronger message of readiness and resolve.”
“It’s gonna fight to win, not to lose. We’re gonna go on offense, not just on defense,” Hegseth said Friday, adding that the U.S. will “raise up warriors, not just defenders.”
President Trump speaks after signing an executive order renaming the Department of Defense to the Department of War, as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. Dan Caine look on, in the Oval Office of the White House on Sept. 5, 2025. / Credit: Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images
In a statement, chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell called the new name “a nod to our proud heritage” and said, “this change is essential because it reflects the Department’s core mission: winning wars. This has always been our mission, and while we hope for peace, we will prepare for war. Defense isn’t enough — we’ve got to be ready to strike and dominate our enemies.”
Plans for the executive order were first reported by Fox News Digital.
The White House didn’t immediately provide any information on how much a permanent renaming might cost, as everything from vehicles and stationery to email addresses and clothing would have to be redone.
Asked by a reporter how much it would cost, Mr. Trump responded, “Not a lot. You know, we know how to rebrand without having to go crazy. We don’t have to re-carve a mountain or anything. … We’re going to start changing the stationery as it comes to, and lots of things like that. We’re not going to be doing things like have been done in the past, when they change the name of forts that shouldn’t have been changed.”
A War Department official said Friday they would have a clearer cost estimate to report at a later time.
Mr. Trump has floated renaming the department for months, telling reporters last week the Department of Defense moniker is “too defensive.”
“We want to be defensive, but we want to be offensive, too, if we have to be,” the president said.
When did the Department of War change to the Department of Defense?
The department changed its name in the late 1940s, part of a larger post-World War II effort to reorganize the nation’s military bureaucracy, cut redundancies and remove references to “war” after two deadly worldwide battles.
Beginning in the 1790s, the U.S. military was split into two Cabinet-level agencies: a War Department that oversaw the Army, and a Navy Department that oversaw naval forces and the Marine Corps. But in the wake of World War II, President Harry Truman pushed Congress to combine the agencies, aiming to “cut costs and at the same time enhance our national security.”
The two departments were merged into a single entity under a Secretary of Defense in 1947, and in 1949, that combined agency was named the Department of Defense.
In June, President Trump claimed the name was changed because “we became politically correct.”
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