In a government image, a circle sits at the center of the aiming reticle. The system operator couldn’t identify it.
The FBI sent a government image showing a dark circle at the center of a reticle to an office that investigates anomalous phenomena. The system operator couldn’t identify it, and parts of the image were redacted.
A single monochrome still image submitted by the FBI to AARO as a UAP report. The frame shows a centered crosshair reticle overlaid on a lightly textured ground/terrain background, with a small dark circular object positioned at the center of the reticle. The image has been altered with multiple rectangular black redactions before submission. Per the manifest description, no date, location, or mission report accompanied the image, and the operator could not positively identify the object.
Still image derived from a U.S. government system, depicting a small dark circular object centered in a crosshair reticle over a textured terrain background. The operator reported being unable to positively identify the UAP. No accompanying mission report was provided.
Multiple solid black rectangular blocks overlaid on the image: a large block covering most of the upper-left quadrant, several horizontal bars across the middle and lower portions of the frame, and additional rectangles along the left and right edges. Redactions obscure portions of the background terrain and any peripheral content but leave the central reticle and the dark circular object visible.
Likely reason: Pre-submission alteration by the originator to mask sensitive imagery context (per manifest: 'The original imagery was altered with redactions before being submitted to AARO').
IMG record. No textual document beyond the manifest description. Visible reticle with tick marks suggests an electro-optical or IR targeting/tracking sensor with a metric/range scale, but the platform is not stated in the released material. Group with the FBI Photo A1–A7 series under FBI 62-HQ-83894.
No. The system operator couldn’t identify the object, and the source does not identify it.
The FBI submitted it as part of a report about an anomalous phenomenon to a U.S. office that investigates such reports.
A black-and-white image shows a dark circle precisely at the center of an aiming reticle. The background is light and slightly grainy, but the circle is the only object described in the image. The system operator couldn’t identify what they were seeing.
In late 2025, the FBI sent the image to a U.S. office that investigates anomalous phenomena. It was submitted as part of a report, but without an explanation of the mission during which it was captured. The result is an image of an object centered in the reticle, with no simple answer to what it is.
This is a still image, not a video, produced by a U.S. government system. At its center is an aiming reticle, a mark that helps a system aim. The dark circle sits precisely in the middle of it.
The official description also notes a slightly textured background. It gives no other identifiable details and does not say whether the circle was moving. So the image alone cannot tell us the object’s size or how far away it was. Those details are missing, not clues that allow us to determine what appears in the image.
The FBI sent the image to an office that investigates reports of anomalous phenomena. That is why it was reviewed there: it was submitted as part of a report about an unidentified object. But the record does not include the accompanying mission report, which could have described what was happening during the image capture and what took place around it.
The original image was not provided in full, either. Parts of it were redacted before it was sent for review. The operator reported being unable to identify the object with certainty; the image itself offers no identification or explanation. What remains is a clear mark at the center of the image, but without the context that might help make sense of it.
No exact date or location was provided, and it is not known what appears in the image or what happened during the mission. The source offers no possible conventional explanation and does not identify the object.
A dark circle, precisely at the center of the reticle, and still unidentified.