Not at all. I can appreciate an elegant, problem-specific solution as much as anyone else. The point is that there are always tradeoffs.

What's the query interface like for the bit array? Does it even have one? Seems like you'd have to sit down and add more code whenever you wanted to know something new about the data. Would you write your own query layer? Would you eventually need a dedicated team to maintain it? You may say that is an extreme conclusion, but I've seen this very story play out multiple times in large dev organizations.

As amorphic pointed out, indexing the data with ES makes it easy to access even for non-technical users. Each layer of abstraction comes with its own costs – of course – but also its own benefits. Tradeoffs.