war.gov/ufo claimed a billion hits! is that even believable? (I dug into the numbers)
So the Department of War’s new UFO transparency site (war.gov/ufo) launched around May 8 and they’re claiming massive numbers:
- 340 million hits in the first 12 hours
- Over 1 billion users/visits worldwide shortly after
As someone who’s been following the UAP drops, I wanted to know if these numbers are legit or just PR fluff. Here’s what I found:
The Claims
They’re straight from official DoW statements and got picked up by a bunch of outlets. The site has been dropping declassified docs, videos, and photos under the PURSUE initiative.
Reality Check
- Government sites rarely release fully audited traffic stats. “Hits” usually means every single server request (images, file chunks, refreshes, bots, etc.), not unique human visitors.
- A billion unique users would be wild (roughly 1 in 8 people on Earth). Even 1 billion total visits would mean crazy repeat traffic.
Good Comparisons
- Ticketmaster Taylor Swift Eras Tour presale (2022): 3.5 billion system requests in basically one day. The site completely melted down from demand. So billions of hits/requests during huge hype events do happen.
- Epstein files drops (especially the big Jan 2026 batch): The justice.gov/epstein site also buckled under heavy traffic and got nonstop coverage, but they never dropped a flashy “billion hits” number. Interest was clearly massive though.
Bottom Line
A billion hits over a week+ on a hyped UFO transparency site isn’t impossible when you factor in media coverage, social sharing, downloads, and repeat visits. But the wording (“users” vs hits vs visits) is loose, and we’re mostly taking their word for it since there’s no independent third-party audit available.
It does show there’s real public hunger for this stuff though.