Circular Object, Western Range, Timestamp Unreliable
FBI Photo B1
An FBI-submitted single still image of an unidentified circular object captured by a U.S. military sensor over the western United States in late 2025, forwarded to AARO with redactions and no accompanying mission report.
Brief
The FBI provided AARO with a monochrome, grainy still image derived from an unspecified U.S. military imaging system, showing a small dark circular object in the upper-right quadrant against what appears to be a mountain range or cloud formation. The imagery was redacted prior to submission, no mission report was attached, and the operator stated they could not positively identify the object. The timestamp embedded in the image is unreliable — the system's date/time was not properly set at time of capture. No analytical judgment or investigative conclusion has been drawn by any agency regarding the event.
Metadata
- Agency
- FBI
- Release
- 5/8/26
- Incident
- Late 2025
- Location
- Western United States
- Type
- PDF • .pdf
- Length
- 1 pages
- Programs
- AARO
- Tags
- circular object, monochrome optical, western United States, 2025, AARO submission, redacted imagery, military sensor
Key points
- The FBI submitted the image to AARO; the original was altered with redactions before submission, and no accompanying mission report was provided.
- The recording operator stated they were unable to positively identify the UAP.
- The date displayed in the image is incorrect — the system's date/time was not set at the time of capture, making chronological pinning unreliable.
- The object appears as a small, dark, circular shape in the upper-right quadrant of the frame, near the center.
- The background in the image shows an indistinct mountain range or cloud formation, consistent with a western United States location.
- The source PDF is a scanned document with no OCR layer; no machine-readable text is extractable from the file.
Most interesting
- The embedded timestamp is known to be wrong — the military system's clock was never set, meaning the image cannot be independently time-verified from the file metadata alone.
- The FBI, not a defense or intelligence agency, served as the submitting entity to AARO, which is atypical for military-system imagery.
- Redactions were applied to the original image before it reached AARO, meaning even the oversight body received an incomplete record.
- The circular morphology of the object, combined with the crosshair reticle framing it, suggests the originating system was a targeting or surveillance optic of some kind — but no system type is disclosed.
- The absence of a mission report leaves the operational context — altitude, platform, mission type — entirely unknown.