President Trump’s executive order to formally change the Department of Defense to the Department of War was met on Friday with enthusiasm from some on the right, but largely elicited skepticism on the left and concerns about the steep cost from former officials.
Trump framed the rebrand as a signal of American strength that will send a message of “victory” to America’s allies and adversaries alike.
Now Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said that the name change represented a new focus on “maximum lethality, not tepid legality” at the Pentagon.
“Violent effect, not politically correct,” he said during the press conference alongside Trump. “We’re gonna raise up warriors. Not just defenders.”
Hegseth shared a video on social media showing workers taking down “Secretary of Defense” signage and in its place putting up his new title as secretary of war. His social media profiles also quickly shifted to describe him as “Secretary of War.”
But in the greater Capitol area, some weren’t nearly as enthused, with some complaining the change will cost the department millions of dollars for an effort deemed largely symbolic.
“It’s very, very costly,” said retired Col. Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, estimating that the effort will cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
“Whatever is displayed — from stationary to actual monuments and such — they’ll have to be recarved, reinscribed, you’re talking about millions of dollars being spent on a name change,” he told The Hill.
House Armed Services Committee ranking member Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) had a more blunt assessment.
“It’s hard to adequately plumb the depths of the stupidity of everything that goes into this. Changing the word ‘defense’ to ‘war,’ what signal does it send? Absolutely freaking nothing. It makes literally no difference,” Smith said on NBC’s Meet the Press NOW.
Smith pointed to the meeting of Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in China earlier this week, a gathering that has worried the Western world.
“What world are we living in that this is our president, this is what he thinks is important, while Xi and Putin and Kim Jong Un . . .are meeting. This is the answer to that?”
Rep. Darren Soto (D-Fla.) poked fun at Trump over the change in relation to the president’s recent campaign for the Nobel Peace Prize.
“Trump is begging for the Nobel Peace Prize. This should cinch it for him right?” he wrote on X.
On the other side of the aisle, including Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) told NewsNation’s Blake Burman that the mission will remain the same despite the rebrand.
“The world is unstable. We have villains out there — Putin and North Korea and Iran being probably the top three,” Zinke said. “There’s a projection of power the United States has to have.”
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the chair of the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, challenged Trump to implement a bigger increase in the Pentagon’s budget to deter threats from the likes of China, Russia and other adversaries.
“If we call it the Department of War, we’d better equip the military to actually prevent and win wars. Can’t preserve American primacy if we’re unwilling to spend substantially more on our military than [former Presidents] Carter or Biden,” McConnell said in a post on social platform X.
“‘Peace through strength’ requires investment, not just rebranding,” he added.
Despite the executive order, Trump will still need Congress to officially rename the Defense Department to the president’s intended new moniker. A few of his Republican allies in Congress are already on top of it, with Sen. Rick Scott (Fla.) and Sen. Mike Lee (Utah) leading the effort in the upper chamber and introducing a War Department renaming bill.
“The U.S. military is the most lethal fighting force on the planet, & restoring the Department of War name reflects our true capabilities to win wars, not just respond to them,” Scott posted on X.
In the House, meanwhile, Rep. Greg Stuebe (R- Fla.) introduced a similar version of the Senate’s bill.
DOD was initially called the Department of War, or the War Department, from 1789 until after World War II in 1947. When President Harry Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947 — splitting the Army and the Air Force into separate service branches — the two, along with the Navy, formed the National Military Establishment, headed by a secretary of defense. Two years later, Congress passed an act that coined the federal organization the Department of Defense.
The estimate to change the names of hundreds of Pentagon agencies and all their stationary, emblems and signage — both at home in the U.S. and at bases overseas — has been placed at upwards of billions of dollars.
Pentagon officials and Trump himself, however, have sought to downplay such concerns.
A War Department official said in a statement that the “cost estimate will fluctuate as we carry out President Trump’s directive to establish the Department of War’s name. We will have a clearer estimate to report at a later time.”
And Trump from the Oval Office said the costs could be spaced out via a phased approach, such as simply updating old stationary when it needs to be replenished.
“We know how to rebrand without having to go crazy,” he said. “We don’t have to recarve a mountain or anything. We’re going to be doing it not in the most expensive [way].”
Wilkerson told The Hill that many former and current national security officials he’s spoken to about the change simply “don’t like it.”
“They don’t like any of this changing, and most of them will say that they don’t like it because it’s an administrative nightmare,” he said. “That’s just the fundamental practicality of most Americans, including soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, space guardsmen and others. They just don’t like the administrative crap that goes along with it.”
