A U.S. Navy aircrewman is missing after a helicopter carrying four crew members made an emergency landing in the Arabian Sea on Wednesday, the Navy said.

The MH-60S Sea Hawk helicopter, assigned to the USS George H.W. Bush, had an emergency water landing at 3:30 a.m. EDT. While the cause of the emergency landing wasn’t immediately clear, the Navy said it did not appear to be the result of any hostile activity.

“Three of the helicopter’s four crew members have been recovered and are in stable condition aboard George H. W. Bush,” the Navy said. “U.S. Navy assets in the region are currently searching for other aircrewman still missing.”

The circumstances surrounding the incident are under investigation.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the U.S. military has also intercepted and shot down multiple Iranian drones that posed a similar threat.

The U.S. military strikes, which have not been previously reported, came during negotiations to end a three-month-old war that has killed thousands and sent global energy prices sharply higher since it began on February 28 with U.S. and Israeli attacks.

U.S. President Donald Trump earlier on Wednesday dismissed a Iranian state media report that Iran and Oman would jointly manage shipping through the Strait of Hormuz as part of a peace deal. Trump said the waterway would remain open.

The U.S. last carried out what it called defensive strikes against Iran on Monday, in what Iran called a violation of the countries’ fragile ceasefire. The U.S. targets included boats attempting to lay mines and missile launch sites that the U.S. military’s Central Command said posed a threat to U.S. forces.

Trump said his death is “the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their Country.” The death occurred after a joint U.S. and Israeli aerial bombardment that targeted Iranian military and governmental sites.

The president also said “heavy and pinpoint bombing” was to continue “uninterrupted” through the week or longer.

There was no immediate comment from Iran. The assassination of the second leader of the Islamic Republic, who had no designated successor, would throw its future into doubt and raise the prospect of a protracted conflict given Iranian threats of retaliation.

Trump in his post called Khamenei “one of the most evil people in history.”

Trump said that Khamenei “was unable to avoid our Intelligence and Highly Sophisticated Tracking Systems and, working closely with Israel, there was not a thing he, or the other leaders that have been killed along with him, could do.”

In a nationally televised address, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there were “growing signs” that Khamenei had been killed when Israel struck his compound early Saturday.

Shortly after the address, two Israeli officials said Israel had confirmed his death. The officials both spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity pending a formal announcement and gave no further details.

Khamenei succeeded Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. He had the final say on all major policies, leading Iran’s clerical establishment and its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard — the two main centers of power in the country’s theocracy.

As the attack on Iran unfolded, Trump urged the Iranian public to “seize control of your destiny” by rising up against the Islamic leadership. In a video announcing the “major combat operations,” Trump told Iranians that “when we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”

Iranian state media, citing the Red Crescent, on Saturday evening said at least 201 people had been killed and more than 700 injured. Iran retaliated by firing missiles and drones toward Israel and U.S. military bases in the region, and exchanges of fire continued into the night.

Some of the first strikes on Iran appeared to hit near the offices of the 86-year-old Khamenei. Before Israeli officials confirmed the death, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told NBC News that Khamenei and President Masoud Pezeshkian were alive “as far as I know.” He called the attack “unprovoked, illegal and absolutely illegitimate.”

The strikes during the holy fasting month of Ramadan opened a stunning new chapter in U.S. intervention in Iran, marking the second time in eight months that the Trump administration has attacked the Islamic Republic during talks over its nuclear program.

About 12 hours after the attacks began, the U.S. military reported no U.S. casualties and minimal damage at U.S. bases despite “hundreds of Iranian missile and drone attacks.” It said targets in Iran included Revolutionary Guard command facilities, air defense capabilities, missile and drone launch sites, and military airfields.

Various members of Iran’s leadership were targeted in the attack. Israel said it killed the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the country’s defense minister. The Israeli military also said its strikes killed the secretary of the Iranian Security Council, a close adviser to Khamenei.

Israel said the strikes had targeted three locations in Tehran where intelligence had indicated that top Iranian officials were gathered. Neither Iran nor the U.S. commented on or confirmed Israel’s claims about the Iranian leadership.

Even if Iran’s top leaders are killed, regime change is not guaranteed.

Democrats decried that Trump had taken action without congressional authorization. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said the administration had briefed several Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress in advance.

The U.N. Security Council said it would meet Saturday afternoon. The U.N.’s nuclear watchdog said on X it was closely monitoring developments and had seen “no evidence of radiological impact.”

Iran was in a “near-total internet blackout,” advocacy group NetBlocks said.

Months of rising tensions

Tensions have soared in recent weeks as American warships moved into the region. Trump said he wanted a deal to constrain Iran’s nuclear program, as the country struggles with growing dissent following nationwide protests.

The trigger for Saturday’s strikes appeared to be the unsuccessful latest round of nuclear talks on Thursday. They also reflected dramatic changes that have left Iran’s leadership in its weakest position since the Islamic Revolution nearly half a century ago.

Israeli and American strikes last June greatly weakened Iran’s air defenses, military leadership and nuclear program. A regionwide conflict sparked by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel has left Iran’s network of proxies across the Middle East greatly weakened. U.S. sanctions and global isolation have decimated Iran’s economy.

Iran responded to the latest strikes by launching missiles and drones targeting Israel and strikes targeting U.S. military installations in Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar. Israel’s military said Iran fired “dozens” of missiles at Israel, with many intercepted. Emergency responder Magen David Adom noted 89 “lightly injured” people.

At least three explosions were heard Saturday evening near the Intelligence Ministry building in northern Tehran, witnesses said, adding that air defense systems had begun operating there. Israel’s military said it had begun new strikes against missile launchers and aerial defense systems in central Iran.

In southern Iran, at least 85 people were reported killed when a girls’ school was struck, and dozens more were wounded, the local governor told Iranian state TV.

Capt. Tim Hawkins, a U.S. Central Command spokesperson, said he was “aware of reports” that a girls’ school was struck and they were looking into them.

Iran’s state news agency IRNA said at least 15 people were killed in the southwest, quoting the governor of Lamerd, Ali Alizadeh, as saying a sports hall, two residential areas and a hall near a school were hit.

Flights across the Middle East were disrupted, and air defense fire thudded over Dubai, the United Arab Emirates’ commercial capital. Shrapnel from an Iranian missile attack on the UAE capital killed one person, state media said.

Attack was coordinated between Israel and US

“Active and serious negotiations have yet again been undermined,” Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi, a key mediator of the nuclear talks, said on X. “Neither the interests of the United States nor the cause of global peace are well served by this.”

Israel said the operation has been planned for months with the United States. Air Force pilots were striking “hundreds of targets across Iran,” Israeli military chief of staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said in a statement.

Targets in the Israeli campaign included Iran’s military, symbols of government and intelligence targets, according to an official briefed on the operation, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss nonpublic information on the attack.

Trump, in seeking to justify the military action, claimed Iran has continued to develop its nuclear program, despite asserting last year the program had been “obliterated” by an earlier round of strikes.

He acknowledged Saturday that there could be American casualties, saying “that often happens in war.” It was a notable statement from a U.S. leader who swept into office on an “America First” platform and vowed to keep out of “forever wars.”

Trump also said he was aiming to “annihilate” the Iranian navy and destroy regional proxies supported by Tehran. He called on the paramilitary Iranian Revolutionary Guard to lay down arms, saying members would be given immunity or face “certain death” if they didn’t.

Iran had said it hoped to avert a war, but maintained its right to enrich uranium. It did not want to discuss other issues such as its long-range missile program or support for armed groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.

Iran has said it hasn’t enriched since June, but it has blocked international inspectors from visiting the sites the U.S. bombed. Satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press have shown new activity at two of those sites, suggesting Iran is trying to assess and potentially recover material.

Iran on Saturday requested an urgent session of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Board of Governors about “these threats to safeguarded nuclear facilities,” according to a letter posted by the semiofficial Tasnim news agency.

Trump had threatened military action but held off following Iran’s recent crackdown on protests spurred by economic grievances that evolved into a nationwide push against the ruling clerics.

The Human Rights Activists News Agency says it confirmed more than 7,000 deaths in the crackdown and is investigating thousands more. The government has acknowledged more than 3,000 killed.

Now, Iranians are likely to be wary about taking to the streets again because the Revolutionary Guard has demonstrated its ruthlessness, said Kamran Matin, an expert on Iran at the University of Sussex in southern England.

Regional effects

The strikes could rattle global markets, particularly if Iran makes the Strait of Hormuz unsafe for commercial traffic. A third of worldwide oil exports transported by sea passed through the strait in 2025.

Saudi Arabia said Iran had targeted its capital and eastern region in an attack that was repelled. Bahrain said a missile attack targeted the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet headquarters in the island kingdom, and three buildings were damaged in the capital, Manama, and Muharraq city by drone strikes and debris from an intercepted missile.

Kuwait’s civil aviation authority said a drone targeted the main international airport, injuring several employees. Kuwait’s state-run news agency said three troops were injured by shrapnel from strikes that hit Ali Al-Salem air base. Explosions could also be heard in Qatar. Jordan said it “dealt with” 49 drones and ballistic missiles.

Toropin and Madhani reported from Washington and Boak from West Palm Beach, Florida. Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv contributed. Associated Press writers around the world contributed to this report.

This story has been corrected to show that IRNA reported 40 people were killed in the school strike, without specifying students.

Robert Ollis, Michael’s father, confirmed to Military Times via phone that he and Michael’s mother Linda had received a call from President Donald Trump Tuesday night confirming Ollis was approved for the award. The infantryman from Staten Island had previously been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the Army’s second-highest combat honor, for his actions.

Robert Ollis said the call with the president was “bittersweet.”

“We wanted this for Michael, but being his father, I want my son back,” he said. Beyond that, though, he added, “This is the best.”

“Our prayers have been answered,” Ollis continued. “There is a God, and if you keep annoying him, He’ll come through.”

The White House did not respond to a query seeking confirmation of the award.

Robert Ollis said he’d heard from the Pentagon on Wednesday morning that the news had not been intended for announcement yet. No date has been confirmed for the award ceremony, Ollis said.

Ollis has become something of a symbol of the power of military alliances. In Camp Kościuszko in Poznan, Poland, a mess hall named after Ollis — the “SSG Michael H. Ollis Warrior Grill” — honors his memory and sacrifice, according to a 2024 Army news release.

In an even more meaningful tribute, the Polish soldier Ollis saved, Lt. Karol Cierpica, would name his son Michael in honor of the fallen soldier.

According to previous Military Times reporting, Ollis, assigned to the 10th Mountain Division’s 2nd Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, had been posted at Forward Operating Base Ghazni in Afghanistan’s Ghazni province on Aug. 28, 2013, when the base was breached by a car bomb. The breach allowed for 10 enemy fighters wearing suicide vests to make their way inside the outer wall. More insurgents pelted the base with mortars and grenades from outside.

According to Ollis’s medal citation, he accounted for his soldiers and checked for casualties before running toward the enemy assault. He linked up with Cierpica and they moved toward the attackers and began to engage them “without their personal protection equipment and armed only with their rifles.”

“While fighting along the perimeter of the forward operating base, an insurgent came around a corner and immediately engaged them with small arms fire,” Ollis’s citation reads. “With complete disregard for his own safety, Staff Sergeant Ollis positioned himself between the insurgent and [Cierpica] who had been wounded in both legs and was unable to walk. Staff Sergeant Ollis fired on the insurgent and incapacitated him, but as he approached the insurgent, the insurgent’s suicide vest detonated, mortally wounding him.”

Tom Sileo, whose 2024 book “I Have Your Back” documented Ollis’ story and heroism, told Military Times in a Wednesday interview that he’d initially connected with the Ollis family in 2014 and stayed in touch with them over the years.

“From the first moment I heard about the story and read about it, the fact that he had saved a foreign soldier’s life and lost his own life in the process … that really jumped out at me,” Sileo said. “I thought it said a lot about our alliances and and about the heroism, of course, of these brave men and women of our military, that they’d be willing to lay their lives down for someone from a different country, and in this case, somebody that that I came to learn through research that Michael really had only encountered a few minutes before he saved his life.”

The Ollis family, Sileo said, had been contacting officials for years about upgrading Michael’s award to the Medal of Honor. Sileo said he had corresponded for years about the matter with now-Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, beginning when he was a Fox News host. He credited Eric Geressy, senior adviser to the Secretary of Defense for Strategy and a retired Army infantryman from Staten Island, for throwing his weight behind the effort as well.

“Michael earned this by what he did on Aug. 28, 2013, but Eric Geressy in particular deserves a ton of credit for making this happen,” Sileo said.

Ollis’s award news comes shortly after the release of the 2026 National Defense Strategy, which emphasized burden-sharing with European allies and chastised some for “irresponsible choices” in protecting their own security. Sileo emphasized that Ollis’s 2013 actions far preceded the current administration and cautioned against making political inferences. But, he said, the story was still significant for today’s climate.

“Maybe this can remind those in charge of how important those alliances are, and what a beautiful way for Michael’s legacy to live on,” Sileo said. “And that’s my hope that the medal… can become something even greater that reminds those in charge of how important these alliances are.”

The drone “aggressively approached” the aircraft carrier with “unclear intent” and “continued to fly toward the ship despite de-escalatory measures taken by U.S. forces operating in international waters,” Central Command spokesman Capt. Tim Hawkins said in a statement Tuesday.

The shootdown occurred within hours of Iranian forces harassing a U.S.-flagged and U.S.-crewed merchant vessel that was sailing in the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. military said.

The Shahed-139 drone was shot down by an F-35C fighter jet from the Lincoln, which, according to Hawkins, was sailing about 500 miles from Iran’s southern coast. The military’s statement noted that no American troops were harmed and no U.S. equipment was damaged.

Then, hours later, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces harassed the merchant vessel Stena Imperative, the military said.

According to Hawkins’ statement, two boats and an Iranian Mohajer drone approached the ship “at high speeds and threatened to board and seize the tanker.”

The destroyer USS McFaul responded to the scene and escorted the Stena Imperative “with defensive air support from the U.S. Air Force,” the statement said, adding that the merchant vessel was now sailing safely.

The actions come as tensions are high between the longtime adversaries. They began to rise again as Iran’s government spent weeks quelling protests that began in late December against growing economic instability before broadening into a challenge to the Islamic Republic.

President Donald Trump had promised in early January to “rescue” Iranians from their government’s bloody crackdown on protesters, which later morphed into a pressure campaign to get Tehran to make a deal over its nuclear program. That is even as the Republican president insists Iranian nuclear sites were “obliterated” in U.S. strikes in June.

“We have talks going on with Iran. We’ll see how it all works out,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday. Asked what his threshold was for military action against Iran, he declined to elaborate.

“I’d like to see a deal negotiated,” Trump said. “Right now, we’re talking to them, we’re talking to Iran, and if we could work something out, that’d be great. And if we can’t, probably bad things would happen.”

The U.S. shot down the drone hours after Iran’s president said Tuesday that he instructed the country’s foreign minister to “pursue fair and equitable negotiations” with the U.S., marking one of the first clear signs from Tehran it wants to try to negotiate with Washington despite a breakdown of talks last summer.

Turkey had been working behind the scenes to make the talks happen there later this week as U.S. Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff is traveling in the region. A Turkish official later said that the location of talks was uncertain but that Turkey was ready to support the process.

Amiri reported from New York.

A U.S. Navy helicopter and a fighter jet assigned to the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz crashed in the South China Sea on Sunday in separate incidents less than an hour apart, the Navy said.

“All personnel involved are safe and in stable condition,” U.S. Pacific Fleet said in a brief statement.

At approximately 2:45 p.m. local time, an MH-60R Sea Hawk helicopter attached to the Nimitz “went down in the waters of the South China Sea while conducting routine operations,” U.S. Pacific Fleet said. Assets assigned to the carrier’s strike group rescued the helicopter’s three crew members. The helicopter was assigned to the “Battle Cats” of Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron 73.

About 30 minutes later, at 3:15 p.m., an F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter jet from the Strike Fighter Squadron 22 “Fighting Redcocks” also crashed in the South China Sea while conducting routine operations, according to the statement. Both crew members successfully ejected from the jet and were rescued, U.S. Pacific Fleet said.

The cause of both incidents are under investigation.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford and its strike group to deploy to U.S. Southern Command to “bolster U.S. capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a social media post.

The USS Ford, which has five destroyers in its strike group, is currently deployed to the Mediterranean Sea. A person familiar with the operation told The Associated Press that one of those destroyers is in the Arabian Sea and another is in the Red Sea. At the time of the announcement, the USS Ford was in port in Croatia on the Adriatic Sea.

The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations, would not say how long it would take for the strike group to arrive in the waters off South America or if all five destroyers would make the journey.

Deploying an aircraft carrier is a major escalation of military power in a region that has already seen an unusually large U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean Sea and the waters off Venezuela.

Hours before Parnell announced the news, Hegseth said the military had conducted the 10th strike on a suspected drug-running boat, leaving six people dead and bringing the death count for the strikes that began in early September to at least 43 people.

The Pentagon told reporters it had nothing further to add beyond the statement.

Hegseth said the vessel struck overnight was operated by the Tren de Aragua gang. It was the second time the Trump administration has tied one of its operations to the gang that originated in a Venezuelan prison.

The pace of the strikes has quickened in recent days from one every few weeks when they first began to three this week, killing a total of at least 43 people since September. Two of the most recent strikes were carried out in the eastern Pacific Ocean, expanding the area where the military has launched attacks and shifting to where much of the cocaine from the world’s largest producers is smuggled.

In a 20-second black and white video of the strike posted to social media, a small boat can be seen apparently sitting motionless on the water when a long thin projectile descends, triggering an explosion. The video ends before the blast dies down enough for the remains of the boat to be seen again.

Hegseth said the strike happened in international waters and boasted that it was the first one conducted at night.

“If you are a narco-terrorist smuggling drugs in our hemisphere, we will treat you like we treat Al-Qaeda,” Hegseth said in the post. “Day or NIGHT, we will map your networks, track your people, hunt you down, and kill you.”

US focus on Venezuela and Tren de Aragua

The strike drew parallels to the first announced by the U.S. last month by focusing on Tren de Aragua, which the Trump administration has designated a foreign terrorist organization and blamed for being at the root of the violence and drug dealing that plague some cities.

While not mentioning the origin of the latest boat, the Republican administration says at least four of the boats it has hit have come from Venezuela.

The attacks and an unusually large U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean Sea and the waters off Venezuela have raised speculation that the administration could try to topple Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who faces charges of narcoterrorism in the U.S.

In the latest move, the U.S. military flew a pair of supersonic heavy bombers up to the coast of Venezuela on Thursday.

The Trump administration maintains that it’s combating drug trafficking into the United States, but Maduro argues that the operations are the latest effort to force him out of office.

Maduro on Thursday praised security forces and a civilian militia for defense exercises along some 2,000 kilometers (about 1,200 miles) of coastline to prepare for the possibility of a U.S. attack.

In the span of six hours, “100% of all the country’s coastline was covered in real time, with all the equipment and heavy weapons to defend all of Venezuela’s coasts if necessary,” Maduro said during a government event shown on state television.

The U.S. military’s presence is less about drugs than sending a message to countries in the region to align with U.S. interests, according to Elizabeth Dickinson, the International Crisis Group’s senior analyst for the Andes region.

“An expression that I’m hearing a lot is ‘Drugs are the excuse.’ And everyone knows that,” Dickinson said. “And I think that message is very clear in regional capitals. So the messaging here is that the U.S. is intent on pursuing specific objectives. And it will use military force against leaders and countries that don’t fall in line.”

Comparing the drug crackdown to the war on terror

Hegseth’s remarks around the strikes have recently begun to draw a direct comparison between the war on terrorism that the U.S. declared after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the Trump administration’s crackdown on drug traffickers.

President Donald Trump this month declared drug cartels to be unlawful combatants and said the U.S. was in an “armed conflict” with them, relying on the same legal authority used by the Bush administration after 9/11.

When reporters asked Trump on Thursday whether he would request Congress issue a declaration of war against the cartels, he said that wasn’t the plan.

“I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, OK? We’re going to kill them, you know? They’re going to be like, dead,” Trump said during a roundtable at the White House with homeland security officials.

Lawmakers from both major political parties have expressed concerns about Trump ordering the military actions without receiving authorization from Congress or providing many details. Democrats have insisted the strikes violate international law.

“I’ve never seen anything quite like this before,” said Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., who previously worked in the Pentagon and the State Department, including as an adviser in Afghanistan.

“We have no idea how far this is going, how this could potentially bring in, you know, is it going to be boots on the ground? Is it going to be escalatory in a way where we could see us get bogged down for a long time?” he said.

But Republican Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida, who has long been involved in foreign affairs in the hemisphere, said of Trump’s approach: “It’s about time.”

While Trump is a president who “obviously hates war,” he also is not afraid to use the U.S. military in targeted operations, Diaz-Balart said.

“I would not want to be in the shoes of any of these narco-cartels,” he added.

Associated Press writers Regina Garcia Cano in Caracas, Venezuela, and Ben Finley and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.

“Jon Harrison will no longer serve as the Chief of Staff of the Secretary of the Navy. We are grateful for his service to the Department,” a Pentagon spokesman told Military Times in a statement on Saturday.

At the time of publication, Harrison had not provided a comment about his ousting.

Harrison was a political appointee of President Donald Trump who had worked with Navy Secretary John Phelan on efforts to streamline the Navy’s policy and budgeting offices after coming into their posts with many of the Navy’s biggest programs years behind schedule.

Politico was first to report on the ouster.

An official, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press, said Harrison had attempted to limit the role of the undersecretary, Navy veteran Cao, and had reassigned aides meant to help Cao in his new role.

Cao, a Republican and strong Trump supporter, ran and lost in Virginia to Democratic opponents in races for both the House and Senate.

Hegseth has fired several top aides this year, including senior advisor Dan Caldwell, deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick and Colin Carroll, the chief of staff to the deputy secretary of defense.

He has also removed the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. CQ Brown, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti and several other uniformed leaders.

Harrison assumed the chief of staff role in January after having served in the first Trump administration as chairman of the United States Arctic Research Commission, a position he held until spring 2021.

In his address to Congress in March, Trump pledged to revive America’s struggling shipbuilding industry, announcing a new shipbuilding office in the White House to help the cause. That effort has since moved to the Office of Management and Budget following the ouster of shipbuilding advocate Mike Waltz from the National Security Council in the wake of the Signalgate scandal.

Waltz created a group chat on the encrypted messaging app Signal in March to discuss an impending U.S. military strike against Houthi rebels in Yemen. The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, was mistakenly added and Hegseth shared sensitive information about the attack in the chat that originated from a classified email.

The Pentagon Inspector General’s office is still investigating the Signal incident.

“It’s a much more appropriate name, especially in light of where the world is right now,” Trump said. He said the previous name was “woke.”

The order comes as some of Trump’s closest supporters on Capitol Hill proposed legislation that would codify the new name into law, with Congress having the sole power to establish, shutter and rename federal departments. Absent a change in law, Trump will authorize the Pentagon to use secondary titles.

“From 1789 until the end of World War II, the United States military fought under the banner of the Department of War,” Florida Republican Rep. Greg Steube, an Army veteran, said in a statement. “It is only fitting that we pay tribute to their eternal example and renowned commitment to lethality by restoring the name of the ‘Department of War’ to our Armed Forces.”

Sens. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, are introducing companion legislation in the Senate.

The Department of War was created in 1789, then renamed and reorganized through legislation signed by President Harry Truman in 1947, two years after the end of World War II. The Department of Defense incorporated the Department of War, which oversaw the Army, plus the Department of the Navy and the newly created independent Air Force.

“We decided to go woke and change the name to Department of Defense,” he said. “So we’re going Department of War.”

Pentagon leader Pete Hegseth, who spoke alongside Trump, said, “We haven’t won a major war since” the name was changed. He said, “We’re going to go on offense, not just on defense.”

Trump has said he wants to change the name back to the Department of War because it “just sounded better,” and Hegseth recently hinted that the switch was around the corner.

Speaking to an auditorium of soldiers Thursday at Fort Benning in Georgia, he said he might have “a slightly different title tomorrow.”

In August, Trump told reporters that “everybody likes that we had an unbelievable history of victory when it was Department of War. Then we changed it to Department of Defense.”

When confronted with the possibility that making the name change would require an act of Congress, Trump told reporters that “we’re just going to do it.”

“I’m sure Congress will go along,” he said, “if we need that.”

Trump and Hegseth have been on a name-changing spree at the Pentagon as they uproot what they describe as “woke” ideology, sometimes by sidestepping legal requirements.

For example, they wanted to restore the names of nine military bases that once honored Confederate leaders, which were changed in 2023 following a congressionally mandated review.

Because the original names were no longer allowed under law, Hegseth ordered the bases to be named after new people with similar names. For example, Fort Bragg now honors Army Pfc. Roland L. Bragg, a World War II paratrooper and Silver Star recipient from Maine, instead of Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg.

In the case of Fort A.P. Hill, named for Confederate Lt. Gen. Ambrose Powell Hill, the Trump administration was forced to choose three soldiers to make the renaming work.

The base now honors Union soldiers Pvt. Bruce Anderson and 1st Sgt. Robert A. Pinn, who contributes the two initials, and Lt. Col. Edward Hill, whose last name completes the second half of the base name.

The move irked Republicans in Congress who, in July, moved to ban restoring any Confederate names in this year’s defense authorization bill.

Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, a Republican who co-sponsored the earlier amendment to remove the Confederate names, said that “what this administration is doing, particularly this secretary of defense, is sticking his finger in the eye of Congress by going back and changing the names to the old names.”

Associated Press writer Matt Brown contributed to this report.

The Republican president can’t formally change the name without legislation, which his administration would request from Congress. In the meantime, Trump will authorize the Pentagon to use “secondary titles” so the department can go by its original name.

The plans were disclosed by a White House official, who requested anonymity ahead of the public announcement, and detailed in a White House fact sheet.

The Department of War was created in 1789, the same year that the U.S. Constitution took effect. It was renamed by law in 1947, two years after the end of World War II.

Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth posted “DEPARTMENT OF WAR” on social media after the executive order was initially reported by Fox News.

Trump and Hegseth have long talked about changing the name, and Hegseth even created a social media poll on the topic in March.

Since then, he has hinted that his title as defense secretary may not be permanent at multiple public events, including a speech at Fort Benning, Georgia, on Thursday. He told an auditorium full of soldiers that it “may be a slightly different title tomorrow.”

In August, Trump told reporters that “everybody likes that we had an unbelievable history of victory when it was Department of War. Then we changed it to Department of Defense.”

When confronted with the possibility that making the name change would require an act of Congress, Trump told reporters that “we’re just going to do it.”

“I’m sure Congress will go along if we need that,” he added.

The move is just the latest in a long line of cultural changes Hegseth has made to the Pentagon since taking office at the beginning of the year.

Early in his tenure, Hegseth pushed hard to eliminate what he saw as the impacts of “woke culture” on the military by not only ridding the department of diversity programs but scrubbing libraries and websites of material deemed to be divisive.

The result was the removal and review of hundreds of books in the military academies, which ended up including titles on the Holocaust and a Maya Angelou memoir. It also resulted in the removal off thousands of websites honoring contributions by women and minority groups.

“I think the president and the secretary have been very clear on this — that anybody that says in the Department of Defense that diversity is our strength is, is frankly, incorrect,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell told reporters in March.

Hegseth has also presided over the removal of all transgender troops from the military following an executive order from Trump through a process that some have described as “dehumanizing” or “open cruelty.”