OAN Staff Blake Wolf
11:26 AM – Friday, September 5, 2025
President Donald Trump is set to sign an executive order on Friday, officially changing the name of the Department of Defense (DoD) back to the Department of War (DoW), White House officials confirmed.
The campaign is reportedly meant to revert the agency back to its once “warrior ethos” origin, after purging the Pentagon of its weak and “woke” culture, officials added.
The change is also symbolic — authorizing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and others to use titles like “Secretary of War,” and “Deputy Secretary of War” in official correspondence and ceremonial contexts.
The Pentagon will be adopting the name “Department of War” as an alternative title as well.
“Everybody likes that we had an unbelievable history of victory when it was Department of War,” President Trump stated last week. “Then we changed it to Department of Defense.”
In a recent interview, the former Secretary of Defense-turned-Secretary of War spoke on the history of the department.
“We won WWI, and we won WWII, not with the Department of Defense, but with a War Department, with the Department of War… As the president has said, we’re not just defense, we’re offense,” Hegseth said. “We’re reestablishing at the Department, the ‘warrior ethos.’ We want warriors, folks that understand how to exact lethality on the enemy.”
“We don’t want endless contingencies and just playing defense. We think words and names and titles matter. So we’re working with the White House and the president on it. Stand by.”
The Department of War, originally established in 1789, was reorganized under the National Security Act of 1947 during President Truman’s administration, which created the National Military Establishment to unify the armed services under a more coordinated structure. Then, in 1949, the Establishment was renamed the Department of Defense, reflecting the effort to centralize authority and build a more efficient national defense system.
The order will require changes to public-facing websites and office signage in the Pentagon, which includes rebranding the public affairs briefing room to the “Pentagon War Annex,” according to a Breitbart report, citing a White House official.
However, it is currently unclear whether Congress will be required to issue final approval, though President Trump stated last week that “We’re just going to do it.”
“I’m sure Congress will go along if we need that. I don’t think we even need that,” Trump added.
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