> Department of Offense needed? <
You might actually be on to something.
From 1789 until 1947 the Defense Department was called the War Department.
“War Department”, that name had serious weight.
“Defense Department”, maybe not so much.
Jerry Pournelle talked about this on his blog.
The political understanding was the President could do what he wanted, more or less, with the Dept. of the Navy (Navy & Marines). If things got serious, and you needed the Army (Dept. of War), you needed a formal declaration of war from Congress.
This of course all went away with the unified DoD post-WWII.
To pick a few nits: The War Department concerned just the Army. The Navy had a separate department. With the creation of the Air Force as a separate branch all three were dumped into the new Department of Defense. But yes, the ‘Department of War’ does have the ring of meaning business about it.
The “Department of Defense” was a merger of the War Department and the Department of the Navy.