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by CMay
33 days ago
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There are technicalities around all of this yes, but we used to have a Department of War with multiple branches of the military under it. Now we have a Department of War with multiple branches of the military under it. It's only named by executive order, which in practice is almost indistinguishable outside of some paperwork that few people will ever see. It's largely the spirit of the thing and the shift in communications posture. |
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No, we didn't. When the Department of War existed, it had exactly one branch under it, the Army. The Navy (including the Marine Corps)—as well as, in time of war only, the Coast Guard—was under the Department of the Navy, which was a separate cabinet level department.
When the US Army Air Forces, which were not a separate branch of the military, was turned into the US Air Force, which was a separate branch—by the National Security Act of 1947—the Department of War was abolished, and replaced with the Department of the Army (which had only the Army under it, just as the old Department of War had) and the Department of the Air Force (which had only the brand new Air Force under it.) There was never was Department of War with more than one branch under it.
This was also the same time that the National Military Establishment, headed by the Secretary of Defense, was created to provide unified structure within which the three military departments (Army, Air Force, and Navy) were embedded (but not, initially, actually subordinated: all three service secretaries were still cabinet-level officers.)
Two years later, amendments were passed to the National Security Act of 1947 which renamed the NME to the Department of Defense, and formally subordinated the service secretaries and their associated departments to the Secretary and Department of Defense, and, but for some minor changes like the creation of the Space Force as a separate branch within the Department of the Air Force, remains the structure in law today.
The only cabinet-level departments that ever had multiple branches of the military under them were the Department of Navy and the Department of Defense. (The Department of the Air Force, as noted in the preceding paragraph, has for the last few years also had multiple branches, but did not in the brief time it was a cabinet level department.) The Department of War, and the Department of the Army that replaced it a (both as cabinet level departments and when the latter was a subcabinet department) have only ever had the Army.