Congressional report says changing Defense Department to War Department could cost $125 million

Renaming the Department of Defense as the Department of War could cost as much as $125 million, depending on the scope of the effort, according to a report from the Congressional Budget Office.

President Trump authorized the use of “Department of War” as a secondary title for the Department of Defense in September. Senate Democratic leader Charles E. Schumer of New York and Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, directed the CBO to estimate the project’s costs.

The price tag would be about $10 million if the name change were primarily implemented at the Pentagon within the office of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, according to the report. The CBO said the cost would likely be paid from existing budgets via reductions in other activities.

The cost could be as high as $125 million if the change were implemented broadly and rapidly throughout the department.

A statutory renaming could cost hundreds of millions of dollars, depending on how Congress and the Pentagon choose to implement the change. The estimates depend heavily on the Defense Department’s ultimate decision, including the speed and completeness of the effort.

“CBO’s estimate is uncertain because [the Defense Department] has not provided information about how it plans to implement the order,” according to the report.

Costs would include staff time spent revising websites, modifying letterhead and updating document templates. Funds for signage or ceremonial items could reduce resources for other items or activities, the report said.

The decision to rename the department aligns with the Trump administration’s broader campaign against a military establishment it considered overly focused on social justice concerns.

“We won the First World War, we won the Second World War, and we won everything before that and in between,” Mr. Trump said at the signing of the executive order. “And then we decided to go ’woke,’ and we changed the name to the Department of Defense.”

The Department of Defense was formally established in 1949. However, its roots trace back to the National Security Act of 1947, which created what was then called the National Military Establishment by merging the Department of War — now known as the Department of the Army — and the Navy Department, while also creating the Air Force.

The report said the Pentagon declined to provide information on the scope, speed and costs of its implementation plan. That means CBO can’t track the changes the department has made or plans to make, along with the costs that have been incurred to date.

“Not knowing what has been done so far or [the Defense Department’s] full plans limits the completeness and accuracy of CBO’s estimate,” the report said.

The report said the most apt financial comparison to renaming the Defense Department is the Biden administration’s efforts to scrub the names of Confederate figures from Army bases. In March 2023, the Army projected it would cost at least $39 million to rename nine posts, nearly double the estimate from the previous year.

The changes and the financial costs could be as modest as altering letterhead and signs to a full-scale rollout in each military organization, including changes to name badges, parking permits, challenge coins and promotional jackets and shirts.

“The military services are unlikely to be subject to many direct naming changes because most of their signage, communications, and naming is service-specific and does not reference [the Department of Defense],” the report stated.

However, the services could incur costs if the changes were widespread. The Air Force recently told its units to use the War Department seal on their letterhead, the report said.