A Military Operator Spotted a Circle He Couldn’t Identify

A small, dark circle appears near the center of a black-and-white image from a U.S. military system. The image was captured in the western United States in late 2025. The operator couldn’t identify what he saw.

The image was sent for review without its accompanying mission report. Parts of the original image had also been redacted before it was submitted. The result is an intriguing image, but key details that could help explain what it shows are missing.

A Circle Near the Crosshairs

The image is grainy, with blurred shapes in the background. They could be a mountain ridge or clouds, but the image offers no way to tell. At the center is a crosshair: intersecting lines marking the center of the frame.

The circle appears in the upper-right quadrant, close to the center. The image description says the operator could not positively identify the object. Beyond noting that the operator could not identify it, the records say nothing more about what happened during the mission.

The Image Was Sent Without the Report

The FBI sent the image to a U.S. office that reviews reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena. The office received a single image, with parts of the original redacted. The accompanying mission report was not included.

The record was made public with a description of the image. But the description does not solve the mystery: it notes a dark circle against an unclear background without identifying the object. The date stamp on the image is no help, either. According to the record, the system’s clock was not set, so the date shown is incorrect. The exact date the image was captured is unknown.

What Remains Unknown

It is not known what appears in the image or where the circle came from. The records offer no possible conventional explanation, and the missing mission report leaves little more to go on. The incorrect date does not reveal when the image was captured, either.

All that remains is a single image: a small circle near the crosshairs, with no answer as to what it is.