PURSUE Record — FBI Photo A1: FBI · Late 2025

FBI Photo A1 is an official still image submitted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) and subsequently declassified as part of PURSUE Release 01, the U.S. Department of War's May 8, 2026 UAP document release. It is a single-file record, monochrome in format, derived from a U.S. government imaging system. The incident is dated to late 2025. No geographic location was provided with the submission, and the FBI did not accompany the image with a mission report.

What this record contains

The public release documents this record as a still image (type: IMG) submitted directly by the FBI to AARO. The submission consists of one file part. According to the official description, the original imagery was altered with redactions before being forwarded to AARO — meaning what appears in the public record is not the complete, unmodified capture. No date precision beyond "late 2025" has been provided, and the location field is listed as N/A. The operator who captured or observed the phenomenon reported that they were unable to positively identify the UAP.

The official narrative description, included for informational purposes by AARO, reads: the image is monochrome and displays a uniform, grainy texture with a central crosshair reticle. A small, dark, and slightly irregular object is visible just below and to the right of the center of that reticle. AARO explicitly states that this narrative description carries no analytical judgment, investigative conclusion, or factual determination about the event's validity, nature, or significance. The public release does not include detailed metadata for this record beyond what appears above.

Imagery & sensor context

The crosshair reticle described in the official narrative is a standard feature of targeting, surveillance, or tracking optics — systems used across law enforcement, military, and intelligence contexts. The grainy, monochrome character of the image is consistent with low-light, infrared-adjacent, or digitally processed imaging systems that are commonly used in operational field settings. Redactions applied before submission to AARO are routine in FBI-sourced materials and typically protect source methods, active investigations, or geographic indicators that could reveal collection capabilities. The specific sensor platform or imaging system is not identified in the public record.

The late 2025 incident date places this image within a contemporary operational context rather than the historical FBI archive series stretching back to 1947. The FBI's involvement in UAP reporting to AARO reflects a formal inter-agency coordination mechanism established under recent UAP disclosure legislation, which expanded AARO's mandate to receive submissions from non-military federal agencies. This record represents the FBI functioning in that reporting capacity — forwarding a sensor capture that its own operator could not resolve.

What this does and does not prove

The documented facts are narrow: an FBI-operated or FBI-associated imaging system captured an object that a trained operator could not identify, the image was redacted before submission, no location was disclosed, and AARO has not attached any analytical conclusion to the record. The presence of a small, irregular object near the center of a targeting reticle is a documented fact of the image itself — it does not establish what the object is, how large it was, how far away it was, how fast it was moving, or whether it behaved in any way inconsistent with known phenomena. The inability of the operator to identify it is significant as a data point, but absence of identification is not evidence of extraordinary origin. The record is unresolved.

How it fits PURSUE Release 01

FBI Photo A1 sits within the FBI-submitted portion of the 162-document PURSUE Release 01 set, which spans military sensor records, NASA archive materials, and federal agency submissions. You can review the full catalogue of Release 01 cases, including the complete FBI submission series, on the SkyLens UAP files page. For broader editorial context on what the release does and does not establish, see other PURSUE Release 01 coverage in the SkyLens archive. The inclusion of FBI-sourced contemporary imagery alongside declassified historical documents illustrates AARO's cross-agency collection mandate and the deliberate breadth of the release.

Editorial note: This analysis is independent commentary on a publicly released document. The original record, source links, and full release metadata are catalogued on the SkyLens UAP files page alongside every other case in the PURSUE Release 01 set.