US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Friday to change the Department of Defence's name back to the Department of War.
The US previously had a Department of War but changed it to the Defence Department in 1949.
"It's a much more appropriate name, especially in light of where the world is right now,” Mr Trump said, days after the military conducted a strike against alleged Venezuelan drug smugglers.
“We won the First World War. We won the Second World War. We won everything before that and in between. And then we decided to go woke and we changed the name to Department of Defence.”
America lost several conflicts after the Second World War, including in Vietnam, Afghanistan and arguably in Iraq. Within minutes of Mr Trump signing the order, the Pentagon updated its social media accounts to reflect the name change.
The name change comes as the Trump administration seeks to project a more aggressive posture for the Pentagon by touting “lethality” and the "warrior ethos".
Mr Trump told reporters he was not sure if the Congress would approve the name change.
"There's a question as to whether or not they have to, but we'll put it before Congress," he told reporters.
Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth, whom Mr Trump referred to as the "newly minted Secretary of War" said there had been a "vibe shift" in the military under the Republican President, with more and more people wanting to join up.
"We’re going to go on offence, not just on defence, maximum lethality, not tepid legality, violent effect, not politically correct," he said. "We’re going to raise up warriors, not just defenders."
Mr Trump has long mused about changing the name of the department, even as he highlights his efforts to end wars abroad and argues that he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.
“Defence is too defensive and we want to be defensive but we want to be offensive too if we have to be, so it just sounded to me like a better name," Mr Trump said.
Despite Mr Trump promising when he came into office to be a "peacemaker", he has also launched several military strikes in his second term in the White House.
Those include bombing Houthi rebels in Yemen, a strike on Iran’s nuclear programme and, most recently, an attack on alleged drug-runners on a motorboat in the Caribbean Sea.
He has also stoked controversy by enlisting the military to support immigration enforcement and border security, including by sending armed National Guardsmen as part of his takeover of the Washington police.
“Trump renaming the Department of Defence to the Department of War is simply ripping the mask off,” said Josephine Guilbeau, former US army captain and Eisenhower media fellow.
“We may call it defence, but our budget shows what the real priority is: endless war,” she told The National.
She added that this directly contradicts Mr Trump's pledge to end wars abroad and reinvest into America.
“Every dollar poured into war is $1 not spent on health care, housing, education – it's not just a money pit, it steals from the future of the people.”
The former War Department, established in 1789, was combined with the Department of the Navy and the Air Force into the National Military Establishment, headed by the defence secretary, in the 1940s. It was renamed the Defence Department in 1949.
Mr Hegseth has been charged with ensuring "peace through strength" and rebuilding the military, which he says was greatly diminished under former president Joe Biden. His administration has promoted strong recruiting numbers as evidence that his moves have strong public support.
The move is the latest in a long line of cultural changes Mr Hegseth has made to the Pentagon since taking office at the beginning of the year.
Early in his tenure, he pushed hard to eliminate what he saw as the effects of “woke culture” on the military by ridding the Pentagon of diversity programmes and scrubbing libraries and websites of material deemed to be divisive.
Mr Hegseth has also presided over the removal of all transgender troops from the military after an executive order from Mr Trump, through a process that some have described as “dehumanising” and “open cruelty”.
-With agencies
