PURSUE Record — FBI Photo A2: FBI · Late 2025

FBI Photo A2 is an official still image submitted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office as part of a formal unidentified anomalous phenomenon report. It appears in PURSUE Release 01, the May 8, 2026 declassified UAP disclosure coordinated by the U.S. Department of War. The record documents a single government-system image from late 2025. No incident location was attached to the submission, and the imagery was redacted before being passed to AARO and, subsequently, to the public.

What this record contains

The FBI submitted FBI Photo A2 as a single-part image file, one of the 14 still images included across the full PURSUE Release 01 set. The incident is dated to late 2025, placing this squarely in the contemporary reporting period rather than among the release's historic archive material. No geographic location was provided in the submission and no accompanying mission report was included alongside the imagery — both gaps that the official release metadata acknowledges explicitly.

The official AARO description characterizes the image as monochrome, with a mottled, textured background described as suggesting a varied landscape or surface, and a central crosshair reticle. A dark, circular object sits at the center of that reticle. The FBI notes that the original imagery was altered with redactions before being submitted to AARO, meaning the version released publicly is not the unprocessed source record. The operator on record reported being unable to positively identify the object.

Imagery & sensor context

The visual signature described in the official narrative — a monochrome frame, a calibrated crosshair reticle, and a centered target object — is consistent with imagery produced by optical tracking or surveillance systems deployed across U.S. government and law enforcement platforms. Such systems frequently output grayscale imagery with embedded reticle overlays, allowing operators to track, bracket, and document objects of interest against a spatial reference frame. The fact that the object is centered on the reticle suggests it was either being actively tracked by the sensor at the moment of capture or was manually framed by the operator.

The textured, uneven background referenced in AARO's description is consistent with overhead or oblique imagery of terrain, though the official narrative explicitly stops short of any geographic determination. Because neither the date specificity beyond "late 2025" nor the location was provided by the FBI in its submission, the sensor platform, collection altitude, and imaging geometry remain undisclosed. The applied redactions constrain interpretation further: whatever contextual detail existed in the original frame has been removed from the public record by design.

What this does and does not prove

What FBI Photo A2 documents, as a matter of record, is that an FBI operator encountered an object they could not positively identify, captured a still image from a government system, and submitted that image to AARO through official channels, where it was logged without resolution. AARO's own language is careful: the narrative description "should not be interpreted as reflecting an analytical judgment, investigative conclusion, or factual determination regarding the described event's validity, nature, or significance." The case is unresolved in the formal sense — it has not been explained — but that finding carries no implication about the object's origin, nature, or physical significance. A circular object on a monochrome reticle frame, stripped of location and platform context, admits a wide range of mundane explanations that the available record cannot rule out.

How it fits PURSUE Release 01

FBI Photo A2 belongs to a subset of contemporary FBI submissions within PURSUE Release 01, distinct from the release's historic FBI archive files stretching back to 1947 and from the Department of War sensor videos and operational mission reports that make up the bulk of the disclosure. The 162-document release — comprising 28 videos, 14 images, and 120 PDFs — was coordinated through AARO from multiple agencies, and the FBI's inclusion of late-2025 imagery alongside decades-old documentary records indicates the bureau maintains an active UAP reporting pipeline to AARO, not merely a historical archive relationship. For the full image record catalogue and additional PURSUE coverage, the SkyLens UAP files page indexes every case in 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.