The operator couldn’t identify the object. The image was sent for review without the mission report, and parts of it were redacted.
A military system captured a dark circle that the operator couldn’t identify. Parts of the image were redacted, and the mission report was not included.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) submitted a report of an unidentified anomalous phenomenon (UAP) to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) consisting of a still image derived from a U.S. military system in 2025. The original imagery was altered with redactions before being submitted to AARO. An accompanying mission report was not provided. The operator reported that they were unable to positively identify the UAP. The date in the image is incorrect due to system date/time not being set. Narrative Description: The monochrome image displays a grainy texture with a central crosshair reticle. A small, dark, circular object is visible in the upper right quadrant. The background shows an indistinct mountain range or cloud formation. This narrative description is provided for informational purposes only. Readers should not interpret any part of this description as reflecting an analytical judgment, investigative conclusion, or factual determination regarding the described event’s validity, nature, or significance.
Photographic evidence — no readable text content. Findings stub is sourced from data/manifest.json only; no document-grounded extraction possible without multimodal image analysis.
No. The operator couldn’t identify it, and the record offers no explanation of what it was.
The system clock had not been set, so the date shown was wrong.
A small, dark circle appeared in an image from a military system in the western United States. The operator who saw it couldn’t identify what it was. The FBI forwarded the image to a U.S. office that reviews reports of this kind.
The image shows a small circle in the upper-right corner against a blurred background. But parts of the image were redacted before it was sent, and the mission report was not included. Investigators were left with an image but without the account that might have explained what was happening when it was taken.
The image was produced by a U.S. military system in 2025. It is in black and white, with a small, dark circle in the upper-right area. Behind it is an indistinct background that may resemble mountains or clouds.
The operator reported being unable to identify the object. The image was therefore passed along for review. It was sent to a U.S. office that handles reports of unusual phenomena, but the record does not say exactly what it was asked to examine.
Before the image was forwarded, it was altered and parts of it were redacted. The record does not specify which parts were redacted. The mission report, which was supposed to accompany the image, was also not sent.
That report might have provided information about the mission during which the image was taken. But it is missing, so the record does not say what was happening at the time or what else was there. The image shows a circle and a blurred background; the operator couldn’t identify the circle.
A date appears on the image, but it is incorrect. The system clock had not been set, so the date shown does not indicate when the image was taken. According to the record, the incident occurred in late 2025.
It is not known what the circle was, what the mission involved, or exactly where the image was taken. The record also does not explain why the image was sent for review, and it offers no conventional explanation for the object’s identity.
A small circle remains in the upper-right corner. The image offers no answer as to what it is.