President Trump’s bid to knock four letters off the “Department of Defense” in a rebrand to the “Department of War” could cost upwards of $100 million, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated.
On September 5, the president signed an executive order to restore the George Washington-era names of the Department of War and the Office of the Secretary of War as secondary titles for the Department of Defense and the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
Within that order was a stipulation that the Secretary of War would later submit a presidential application to permanently change the name of the department.
However, rebranding the nation’s biggest employer is no small task. The Pentagon oversees 1.32 million people in active duty and 750,000 civilian personnel.
According to the CBO, which responded to a request for information from senators Jeff Merkley and Chuck Schumer, the shift would cost about $10 million for a “modest implementation” of the change, primarily within the department itself. This sum could be absorbed as an opportunity cost, the CBO added, paid out of existing budgets.
But there are two ends to the scale: Minimal implementation might cost a measly few million, the CBO said, but on the extreme end it could cost taxpayers $125 million.
“Broadly, the costs would include staff time spent updating document templates, revising websites, or modifying letterhead, time that could be devoted to the activities that the department had planned to conduct before the executive order was issued,” the CBO wrote. “Similarly, funds used for signage or ceremonial items could reduce resources available for planned items or activities.”
The scale of the costs depends on how “aggressively” the rebrand is rolled out, and how it would be prioritized against remaining activities and “ongoing missions.” A more aggressive rollout, for example, might include “immediately replacing stationery, signage, and nameplates” as opposed to replacing them when existing stock runs out.
“The faster the changes were implemented, the more parts of DoD that the changes applied to, and the more complete the renaming, the costlier it would be,” the CBO added.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, the now aptly-named Department of War is refocused on readiness and lethality—and its title now reflects its status as the most powerful fighting force in the world,” the White House told Fortune. “The White House is working hand-in-glove with the Department of War on implementation of the executive order.”
One of the most expensive endeavours in the proposed change would be renaming the air bases. Even back in March 2023, the Army projected that it would cost at least $39 million to rename nine posts: Forts AP Hill, Benning, Bragg, Gordon, Hood, Lee, Pickett, Polk, and Rucker. That was nearly double an estimate by the Naming Commission a year prior, which put the price at $21 million.
There are also costs incurred for other non-federal entities if the Department of War decides to push its name change through as a blanket approach. For example, the CBO points out that North Carolina spent $400,000 in 2023 to change the name of Fort Bragg to Fort Liberty, just to change it back to Fort Bragg again last summer.
