It's a fairly recent development. It was created as the department of war by Washington and remained that until 1947 where it split into the departments of the air force and army, joining the already existing department of the navy, which together made up the national military establishment (NME), which was renamed 2 years later to the DOD.
this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2025
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Showerthoughts
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Oddly enough, this also coincides with the time when the US military was more explicitly about offence rather than defense. After the Revolution, people mistrusted the federal government having a large standing army. The army was raised up in time of war, and everyone went home when it was over.
Post-WW2 was the first time the US kept a large army in "peace". Been that way ever since.
- Military-industrial complex
- War machine
- Merchants of death
There are many names.
A way of keeping people employed usefully in many highly skilled jobs so you don't need to give them social security payouts for being jobless. In this way it is a truly excellent idea.
The problem is that it happens at the expense of other jobs, and the lack of transparency makes corruption way too easy.
"The Ministry of Peace"
-Orwell
funny how the israeli military is called a "defense force". haven't been doing much defending.
I have been calling them the genocide force for the past year
Old joke from when I was in engineering college.
What's the difference between a electrical engineer and a civil engineer?
One builds the bombs one builds the targets.
The US used to have the Department of War. Then it split up after WWII into the departments of the army, navy, air force and the overseeing department was renamed the department of defense. Probably a branding thing.
edit: a word
I’ve always heard to it referred to as the “military industrial complex”. Eisenhower tried to warn us about it in the 1950s.
"I didn't shoot a baby, I neutralized a threat!" - the IDF
They also cause Famines, Plagues, and Pestilence. They have whole departments devoted to nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.
They're not a one trick pony.
For countries like Finland, the Ministry of Defense is not about offense, and is very heavily armed.
You're talking about the same industry that coined the term "preemptive strike" instead of calling it what it is: starting a war.
Yeah ... no.
Ask Europeans if they feel working in that industry right now feels like anything but for defensive reasons.
Indeedy, my wife works for the German army.
Protecting your own country doesn't always involve actively declaring war with everyone. Often it's economic or cyber infrastructure hardening related
It was the department of war but the government decided that that name was too honest, makes the corpos look bad too
The attack industry
Gentlemen! There will be no fighting in the War Room!
WWII was the war to end all wars, so we couldn't have a department of war anymore. Still "needed" and army , navy, marines and all the weapons for them though so we created the department of defense.
Defense does also do defense in a lot of cases
That would imply someone attacking first, no?
Yes, the US has countries and dictators taking pot shots at us all the time.
US tech was/is being used by Ukraine to shoot Russian missiles out of the sky
On the first case, the actual United States territory? Or like US bases in other countries?
Yes
You just realized that?
No
Then it's not really on topic...
Someone who works in said US defense industry here
Neither defense nor war really apply to what we do, but between the two defense is the more apt description. The DoD largely uses a strategy of deterrence, where the technology we develop and training done for the "war fighter" is just public and visible enough that no other major country wants to take the risk of going into full open conflict with the US. Since most efforts go into deterrence, and deterrence is a defense strategy, it does become the more appropriate word.
Sure the US loves its proxy wars, but those don't throw the entire nation into wartime. Plus, in a round about way proxy wars help with the deterrence since we get an outlet for the decades old stock piles of arms that we no longer want and want to replace with the new stuff. If our waste products are being useful in places like Ukraine, it helps build up an idea of what it is we keep for ourselves, again building up a deterrence of openly and directly attacking the US
Sure the US loves its proxy wars, but those don’t throw the entire nation into wartime.
because keeping the wars 'over there' and impacts from said conflicts minimal on the populace (no drafts, no rationing, no sacrifices) makes it easy to send the youth to be blown up in far off places.
What I was referencing by proxy war was Ukraine and what Israel was supposed to be. The US sends arms to another nation with the intention that the other nation, who is already in conflict (or just happens to be through dubious and convenient circumstances) will take those arms and give political adversaries a bloody nose or serve as enough of a distraction that they won't come after the US and keeps the US from putting boots on the ground. Is working out quite well for us in Ukraine, Israel was supposed to distract the middle east but turns out that when you hand a genocidal maniac a bunch of weapons, he's gonna do maniacal genocidal things with them. Who could have possibly guessed
Regardless of what you call it, making the production of weapons an 'industry' is psychotic.
let's look at how well it worked out when a country turned over it's nuclear weapons and relied on treaties to keep it safe.
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