Military

Trump Wants a Department of War. A House GOP Amendment Would Give Him One.

President Donald Trump’s desire to have a “Department of War” could be fulfilled under an amendment filed this week by a Republican congressman.

Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., has filed an amendment to the annual defense policy bill that would formally change the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War.

The amendment still faces many hurdles before it would become law, including a decision by the House Rules Committee on which amendments will even get votes on the House floor. But its filing indicates GOP support in Congress for the idea.

“Restoring the Department of War name to our military will not only honor the heroism of the service members who came before us but also remind each new generation of their sacred responsibility to defend freedom,” Steube, an Army veteran, said in an emailed statement to Military.com on Wednesday.

The Department of War was the name for the Cabinet agency that oversaw the Army for much of the country’s history. Established shortly after the ratification of the Constitution in 1789, the department first included the Army, Navy and Marine Corps before the Department of the Navy was created as a separate Cabinet agency in 1798.

In 1947, Congress passed a sweeping reorganization of the country’s national security apparatus that included replacing the War Department with the Department of the Army, creating the Air Force and establishing a new umbrella agency to oversee each military department. Two years later, Congress amended the law and named the nascent agency the Department of Defense.

The reorganization was championed by then-President Harry Truman as a way to make the services more cohesive after World War II.

“One of the lessons which have most clearly come from the costly and dangerous experience of this war is that there must be unified direction of land, sea and air forces at home as well as in all other parts of the world where our armed forces are serving,” Truman said in a 1945 message to Congress ^[2]. “It is true, we were able to win in spite of these handicaps. But it is now time to take stock, to discard obsolete organizational forms and to provide for the future the soundest, the most effective and the most economical kind of structure for our armed forces of which this most powerful nation is capable.”

Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have floated the idea of restoring the Department of War name repeatedly since Trump took office in January. But this week, the pair gave their clearest indications yet they plan to move forward with the idea.

“Defense? I don't want to be defense only. We want defense, but we want offense too, if that’s OK,” Trump said in the Oval Office during an executive order signing ^[3] ceremony. “As Department of War, we won everything. We won everything, and I think we're going to have to go back to that.”

Hegseth, who was standing behind Trump, replied that reviving the Department of War name is “common sense” and that plans to do so are “coming soon.”

Renaming the Department of Defense would follow a pattern of the Trump administration restoring discarded names of military assets. Contravening a congressional mandate, the administration changed the names of nine Army bases ^[4] back to the original monikers that honor Confederate military leaders.

Because the Department of Defense name is enshrined in law, a name change likely requires another act of Congress.

Trump, though, has appeared unconcerned that Congress could be an impediment.

“We're just going to do it,” Trump said later Monday during an event to mark the fourth anniversary of the Abbey Gate bombing in Afghanistan. “I'm sure Congress would go along if we need that. I don't think we will need that.”

Steube’s proposed amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, suggests at least some Republicans are ready to go along with the idea.

The amendment would specifically replace any references to the Department of Defense in federal law and regulation with the Department of War. It would also rename the secretary of defense to the secretary of war.

Steube’s office did not answer questions on the prospect for the amendment getting a vote and a cost estimate for the renaming.

The amendment follows other efforts by Steube to demonstrate his support for the president. Earlier this year, he introduced a bill seeking ^[5] to force the Washington, D.C., area transit system to change its name to the “Washington Metropolitan Authority for Greater Access,” or WMAGA, and change the name of its Metrorail to the “Trump Train.”

Hundreds of amendments are usually proposed for the NDAA, with typically just a fraction granted votes. The House Rules Committee is scheduled to meet the week of Sept. 8 to decide which amendments to advance to the House floor, with the full chamber expected to debate and vote on the NDAA and amendments later that week.

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Hegseth Fires General Whose Agency's Intel Assessment of Damage from Iran Strikes Angered Trump

Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has fired a general whose agency’s initial intelligence assessment of damage ^[1] to Iranian nuclear sites from U.S. strikes angered President Donald Trump ^[2], according to two people familiar with the decision and a White House official.

Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kruse will no longer serve as head of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.

The firing is the latest upheaval in the U.S. military and intelligence agencies, and comes a few months after details of the preliminary assessment leaked to the media. It found that Iran’s nuclear program has been set back only a few months by the U.S. strikes, contradicting assertions from Trump ^[3] and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Republican president, who had pronounced the Iranian program “completely and fully obliterated," rejected the report.

In a news conference following the June strikes, Hegseth lambasted the press ^[4] for focusing on the preliminary assessment but did not offer any direct evidence of the destruction of Iranian nuclear production facilities.

“You want to call it destroyed, you want to call it defeated, you want to call it obliterated — choose your word. This was an historically successful attack,” Hegseth said then.

Kruse's ouster was reported earlier by The Washington Post.

Trump has a history of removing government officials whose data and analysis he disagrees with ^[5]. Earlier this month, after a lousy jobs report, he fired the official in charge of the data. His administration has also stopped posting reports on climate change ^[6], canceled studies on vaccine access ^[7] and removed data on gender identity ^[8] from government sites.

The firing of the DIA chief culminates a week of broad Trump administration changes to the intelligence community and shakeups to the military leadership. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence — which is responsible for coordinating the work of 18 intelligence agencies, including DIA — announced that it would slash its staff and budget ^[9].

The Pentagon announced this week that the Air Force’s top uniformed officer, Gen. David Allvin, planned to retire ^[10] two years early.

Hegseth and Trump have been aggressive in dismissing top military officials, often without formal explanation.

The administration has fired Air Force Gen. CQ Brown Jr.^[11] as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as the Navy’s top officer, the Air Force’s second highest-ranking officer, and the top lawyers for three military service branches.

In April, Hegseth fired Gen. Tim Haugh ^[12] as head of the National Security Agency and Vice Adm. Shoshana Chatfield ^[13], who was a senior official at NATO.

No public explanations have been offered by the Pentagon for any of these firings, though some of the officers were believed by the administration to endorse diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

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