CBO: Pentagon Rebrand to 'War' Department Could Cost $125M

Taxpayers could be on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars to swap out one word on the Pentagon's letterhead. A new Congressional Budget Office analysis estimates that officially rebranding the Department of Defense as the "Department of War"—a change championed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and backed by President Trump—could cost anywhere from $10 million to $125 million or even more, depending on how aggressively the switch is carried out. The low-end "modest implementation" assumes a slow phase-in; the high-end scenario assumes the Pentagon quickly discards and replaces everything bearing the old name, the New York Times reports. "Department of War" was the Pentagon's original name for around 150 years, until it was changed after World War II to signal a preference for peace.

Trump ordered federal agencies in September to start using "Department of War," saying it "just sounded better" and that "Defense" was too politically correct. But the move is not legally binding without an act of Congress, and lawmakers have so far declined to take it up. The Pentagon, which is pushing the change, did not provide CBO with information on how much it has already spent on related efforts, including new bronze plaques and other signage, materials, website information, and more. A photo in November showed Hegseth fastening a fresh "Department of War" plaque at a main Pentagon entrance, declaring he wanted visitors to know officials were "deadly serious" about the rebrand. A report sent to Congress found that renaming expenses over a 30-day period for five departments under Hegseth cost $1.9 million, and CBO warns that figure could be incomplete, CBS News reports.

Per ABC News, the CBO analysis found that if the name is legally changed, it "could cost hundreds of millions of dollars depending on how Congress and DoD chose to implement the change." Democrats requested the cost estimate, with Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon calling the push a "vanity project" that does nothing for national security or military families. The CBO report notes that the Pentagon's last large naming effort—stripping Confederate names from bases, ships, and other assets under a 2021 law—ultimately cost about $62.5 million, nearly triple early projections. Hegseth has criticized that earlier effort as "erasing history" and has tried to rename some bases to honor different US soldiers with the same surnames as the Confederate officers they replaced.