Disclosure
Tier 2finding · dod-rename-vestiges

The Department of Defense → Department of War rename is half-finished in markup

Despite the public rebrand to “Department of War,” the war.gov homepage HTML still contains 13 “DOD” references, hosts every image from `media.defense.gov`, and lists both `DoW` and `DOW` capitalizations in its meta keywords.

The rebrand is more press-release than infrastructure. Petabytes of imagery (general portraits, banners, press photos) still live on the old DoD media host — moving them is expensive and breaks years of inbound links. Open the page-source on any war.gov page and the legacy identity is right there.

Evidence

On the homepage HTML: • 13 surviving references to the string DOD (including in JavaScript variables, paths, and a meta keyword) • 22+ image URLs pointing to media.defense.gov (general portraits, OG-card images, banner photos) • Meta keywords list: War Department, Department of War, DoW, DOW, Secretary, Deputy Secretary, Joint Chief, United States, Military, Government — both DoW and DOW are listed; they couldn’t commit to one capitalization

On the UFO press release page (the one announcing the PURSUE program): • Multiple links use media.defense.gov/2026/... URLs for their imagery

On the live PURSUE manifest: • PDFs at media.defense.gov/2023/Mar/13/.../DOD-STRATEGIC-MGMT-PLAN-2023.PDF — filename still has DOD- prefix

Sources

https://www.war.gov/
Homepage source — grep for `DOD` and `media.defense.gov`
https://media.defense.gov
Live imagery host still used by war.gov