Pete Hegseth (Peter Brian Hegseth) is an American political figure and former Fox News host who has served since January 25, 2025 as the U.S. secretary of defense, a role he rebrands as “secretary of war.” As secretary, he is the civilian head of the Department of Defense/War, responsible for overall direction, policy, and budgeting of the U.S. armed forces and defense agencies, and is the principal defense adviser to the president and a key link in the chain of command from the president to U.S. combatant commanders.
The “Department of War” is the Trump administration’s rebranded public name for the U.S. Department of Defense. Executive Order 14347 (September 5, 2025) authorized “Department of War” and “secretary of war” as secondary titles, and the Pentagon’s website was changed to war.gov. Legally, however, it is still the Department of Defense with the same statutory mission: to provide the military forces needed to deter war and ensure U.S. national security and to oversee all branches of the armed forces and related defense agencies.
Rocket Lab is a U.S.-New Zealand aerospace company that provides orbital launch services and builds satellites and spacecraft components; it has become an important supplier to the U.S. military, including as a prime contractor for Space Development Agency satellite constellations and other Defense/War Department programs. It is hosting Hegseth’s Los Angeles–area event (at its Long Beach, CA factory) as a showcase stop on his tour because the Pentagon is holding it up as a model of the “rapid, scalable” U.S.-based production and defense-industrial capacity it wants to encourage.
The "Arsenal of Freedom" tour is a month‑long, multistate speaking tour by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. In the Pentagon’s and Hegseth’s own description, its stated purpose is to rally the country to rebuild and “revitalize” America’s defense industrial base and manufacturing workforce, emphasize that U.S. security depends on a strong Defense Industrial Base, and promote a new defense‑acquisition approach that rewards speed, innovation, and a “commercial‑first” mindset while cutting bureaucratic red tape.
According to the media advisory, the event will be livestreamed via the Department of War’s official channels. For similar tour stops, the Pentagon has carried the stream on the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS) webcast platform and linked it from War.gov; the Los Angeles stop is listed on DVIDS as a live webcast for Jan. 9, 2026, indicating the public will be able to watch there and via any embed or link from the Department of War website.
In the advisory, “defense industry leaders” is a general phrase and no specific attendee list is published, so exact organizations can’t be confirmed. However, coverage of the Rocket Lab stop notes that Hegseth’s audience at the Long Beach facility consists of Rocket Lab leadership and employees and invited guests from the defense and space sector; given Rocket Lab’s current work, this likely includes officials and contractors tied to Space Development Agency and U.S. Space Force satellite programs and other Pentagon space contracts, but particular companies or agencies are not named publicly.