Two Dark Objects, Western U.S., Late 2025

Brief

The FBI forwarded a single monochrome still image — derived from a U.S. military system and pre-redacted before submission — to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) as a UAP report. The image shows two dark, irregular-shaped objects positioned just right of center in the upper right quadrant, against a grainy background with a central crosshair overlay. No accompanying mission report was provided, and the operator on record was unable to make a positive identification. The timestamp embedded in the image is unreliable; the source system's date and time had not been configured.

Metadata

Agency

FBI

Release

5/8/26

Incident

Late 2025

Location

Western United States

Type

PDF • .pdf

Length

1 pages

Programs

AARO

Tags

two objects, irregular shape, monochrome still image, military imaging system, western United States, 2025, AARO submission, pre-submission redaction

Key points

• Two dark, irregular-shaped objects appear just right of center in the upper right quadrant of the monochrome frame.
• The FBI submitted the image to AARO after applying redactions — the original imagery was altered before submission.
• No mission report was provided alongside the image submission, leaving operational context absent.
• The operator could not positively identify the UAP.
• The date and time stamped in the image are incorrect because the source system's clock was never set.
• The incident location is described as the western United States, with a date of late 2025.

Most interesting

• The embedded timestamp in the image is formally unreliable — the imaging system's clock was never configured, making temporal correlation with other data sources impossible without external records.
• The FBI acted as an intermediary reporter to AARO rather than as the originating operator, and did not supply the mission report that would normally accompany such imagery.
• Redactions were applied to the image before it left the originating system's chain of custody, meaning AARO received a degraded evidentiary copy rather than the raw capture.
• Despite originating from a U.S. military imaging platform — which implies calibrated optics and known field-of-view parameters — no quantitative size or distance estimate appears in the submission.
• The two objects are described as irregular in shape, which distinguishes them from the round or spherical morphology reported in the majority of AARO's catalogued UAP cases.