United States President Donald Trump is set to sign an executive order to rebrand the Department of Defense to the Department of War.
This move appears to signal a potential shift in how the U.S. approaches military policy.
It was gathered that the department will initially use the new Department of War as a “secondary title” while the Trump administration will pursue congressional approval to make the change permanent.
Recall that the Department of Defense, established in 1947 under the National Security Act, oversees the U.S. military, including the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps.
The department has an annual budget exceeding $800 billion and it is one of the largest government agencies, employing over 3 million personnel, including active-duty troops, reservists, and civilians.
Here are key facts about the history of the department;
1). The War Department was established in August 1789 to oversee the U.S. Army, Navy, and Marine Corps, according to an official Pentagon history web page.
A little less than a decade later, responsibility for naval forces was transferred to the new Department of the Navy, which also gained responsibility for the U.S. Marine Corps in 1834.
That left the War Department responsible for the Army, and later for the Army Air Corps — the precursor of the Air Force.
2). The War Department underwent a major reorganization and name change following World War II.
The changes began with the signing of the National Security Act by then-President Harry Truman in July 1947.
The legislation merged the War and Navy Departments as well as the Air Force into the “National Military Establishment” led by a defense secretary.
The National Security Act was amended in August 1949 to change the name of the National Military Establishment to the Department of Defense.
It also removed the secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force from cabinet positions and made them subordinate to the defense secretary.
3). The U.S. Defense Department is headquartered at the Pentagon, a five-sided building located in Virginia on the Potomac River.
Construction of the building was authorized due to space constraints in the run-up to World War II, with personnel of what was then known as the War Department split between more than a dozen buildings at the time and the number of staff expected to grow.
