Washington – President Donald Trump will sign an executive order on Friday by adding “War Department” as the secondary title of the Department of Defense, two White House officials said to NBC News.
The order, which Trump is expected to firm in the Oval office, will not change the name of the Department of Defense, but will authorize the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to use secondary titles such as “Secretary of War” and “Department of War” in official correspondence and public communications and during formal ceremonies, according to a preview of the White House of the Order.
Trump will require that all departments and executive agencies “recognize and accommodate these secondary titles in internal and external communications.”
Fox News first reported in the executive order.
Officially changing the name of the department would require the approval of the Congress. The Congress established it as the War Department in 1789.
President Harry Truman supervised the change of name of the War Department to the National Military Establishment after signing the 1947 National Security Law, which organized all military services in a single organization led by a Secretary of Defense. Before that, the war department, the Navy and the Air Force operated separately.
In 1949, the National Security Law was modified to change the name of the new National Military Establishment Agency to the Department of Defense amid the concerns that the abbreviations of the previous name (NME) sounded too similar to the “enemy.”
Trump’s order will instruct Hegesh to recommend legislative and executive actions to permanently reverse the name to the war department.
Trump had pointed out for months the interest in changing the name to his eighteenth -century iteration, denouncing his current as not Belic enough.
The war department, Trump said in the Oval office last month, “had a stronger sound” and an “incredible story of victory” attached to it, pointing to US victories in world wars I and II.
“I don’t want to be just a defense. We want defense, but we also want to offend,” Trump said. “As a war department, we win everything.”
Hegesh, whom Trump has previously addressed as the “Secretary of War”, has also been a vocal defender of changing the name. He said at a cabinet meeting last month that will help consolidate a “warrior spirit” in the department.
After a trip to Fort Benning, Georgia, on Thursday night, Hegseth joked with the change of formal brand upon his return to Washington.
“Thank you for traveling with the war department,” Hegseth told journalists who accompanied him.
Megan Shannon contributed.
