US President to rename Department of Defence to Department of War.

Sept 2025 : US President Donald Trump will rename the Defence Department as the Department of War, as per White House reaffirmation on Thursday, the 04^th. September, 2025.

The Trump administration has focused on restoring a “warrior ethos” to the military under Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, as President Trump has reiterated that, “As Department of War, we won everything. We won everything. I think we’re going to have to go back to that“.

The Defence Secretary has very recently renamed his Pentagon conference room the “W.A.R. Room”.

As President Trump would sign an executive order on Friday – 05^th. September to restore the historic name “Department of War” as a secondary title for the Department of Defence, according to a White House official. The order will also authorise Hegseth and subordinate officials within the executive branch to use secondary titles such as “Secretary of War,” and “Deputy Secretary of War” in official correspondence and in other communications.

However, renaming the department would require an act of Congress, but the White House was considering other avenues to draft the changes, along with implementing them.

The executive order will empower the Defence Secretary Hegseth to recommend legislative and executive actions required to permanently rename the Defence Department the U.S. Department of War, according to the White House official. The name change would convey a stronger message of readiness and resolve compared to “Department of Defence”, which highlights only defensive capabilities, and sharpen the department’s focus on national interest and signify to adversaries that it’s prepared to wage war to secure interests, per the official.

Congress established the War Department in 1789 as a cabinet-level position to oversee the Army, Navy and Marine Corps. In 1947, the Navy and War Departments were merged into the National Military Establishment. The U.S. Air Force was formally established later that year. Meanwhile, in 1949, the National Military Establishment became the Department of Defence. The cabinet-level Army, Navy and Air Force secretaries were replaced by the new secretary of defence.

However, what has drawn international diplomatic attention is the widening distance between the Pentagon and the Washington defence orthodoxy — or what’s left of it under Trump 2.0. Most recently, the Pentagon suspended participation in think tank events, a signal that outside experts consulted and courted by past White Houses are to be treated as suspect.

This administration’s pledge to upend the status quo, exemplified by the “Make America Lethal Again” mantra, has manifested in two forms:

1. Axing projects and people seen as redundant or too old school, a la the U.S. Army Transformation Initiative.

• Disengaging from traditional public forums in favour of friendlier, niche networks, such as Steve Bannon’s “War Room.”

The decision to freeze out think tanks came just days after the Pentagon’s abrupt withdrawal from the Aspen Security Forum, among the most exclusive events on the national security circuit. Those mandates are causing internal confusion, Politico reports, as people attempt to decipher the new rules and what applies to whom. “No more taxpayer-funded vacations to Aspen, CO!” press secretary Kingsley Wilson wrote on X on Monday. Under Trump and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, she continued, “our war fighters are getting back to what they do best: defending our nation and keeping America safe“.

“I think they’re going to shoot themselves in the foot here when they reduce, in essence, the reach of their message“, said Price Floyd, a former head of public affairs at the Pentagon. “For industry, they don’t know what to do. They don’t know how to pivot. They don’t know where to be. What events do they take part in? What do they support?”

The moves are part narrative control, part politics, part divorce from “the Blob”. That derisive term for Beltway groupthink was coined by former Obama adviser Ben Rhodes. But its currency is stronger than ever. In the D.C. national security community, high-level experience is lauded above almost all else. But for America First folks, a long resume just means you’ve been doing things wrong for a long time.

Team Maverick