Peter Alexander and Nnamdi Egwuonwu at NBC:
President Donald Trump will sign an executive order Friday adding "Department of War" as the secondary title of the Defense Department, two White House officials told NBC News.
The order, which Trump is expected to sign in the Oval Office, won't rename the Defense Department, but it will authorize Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to use secondary titles like “secretary of war” and “Department of War” in official correspondence and public communications and during formal ceremonies, according to a White House preview of the order.
Trump will require all executive departments and agencies to “recognize and accommodate these secondary titles in internal and external communications.”
Fox News first reported on the executive order.
Officially changing the department's name would require congressional approval. Congress established it as the War Department in 1789.
President Harry Truman oversaw the name change of the Department of War to the National Military Establishment after he signed the National Security Act of 1947, which organized all military services into a single organization led by a secretary of defense. Before then, the Department of War, the Navy and the Air Force operated separately.
In 1949, the National Security Act was amended to change the name of the new agency to the Department of Defense amid concerns that the abbreviations of the previous name (NME) sounded too similar to "enemy."
