Overview
- The Congressional Budget Office released an 11-page estimate placing costs as low as a few million dollars for minimal steps and up to $125 million for broad, rapid adoption, with modest changes likely covered by existing budgets.
- The office emphasized significant uncertainty because the Defense Department has not provided an implementation plan for the executive order.
- A statutory renaming could drive costs into the hundreds of millions of dollars depending on how Congress and the Pentagon execute the change.
- President Donald Trump’s September directive authorized use of the secondary title in official communications, but the department’s legal name remains unchanged without legislation.
- Visible updates already include website and social media changes, new Pentagon signage and a Department of War plaque, as Democrats who requested the review point to costs for signage, stationery and digital coding; NBC has separately reported an unconfirmed estimate as high as $2 billion.