PURSUE Record — FBI Photo B4: FBI · Western United States · Late 2025

FBI Photo B4 is a declassified PDF submitted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) as part of PURSUE Release 01, made public on May 8, 2026 by the U.S. Department of War. The record documents a single still image derived from a U.S. military sensor system, capturing an unidentified object over the Western United States in late 2025. The operator could not positively identify what was recorded. No explanatory conclusion has been reached.

What this record contains

FBI Photo B4 is a single-part PDF containing a still image sourced from a U.S. military system in 2025. The FBI submitted this imagery to AARO along with a brief report, though no accompanying mission report was provided — a gap that materially limits the contextual information available to analysts or the public. The original imagery was redacted before submission, meaning what appears in the public release is a modified version of the original capture.

The official release describes the image as a monochrome, grainy frame with a central crosshair reticle overlaid — consistent with electro-optical or targeting sensors deployed on military platforms. A small, dark, circular object is visible in the center-right quadrant of the frame, close to the center. The background shows an indistinct, possibly natural landscape. One documented metadata anomaly: the date embedded in the image is flagged as incorrect because the source system's clock was not properly configured. The incident is placed broadly in late 2025, somewhere in the Western United States. No finer location or timestamp is available in the public record.

Historical & documentary context

FBI Photo B4 is not a Cold War-era filing — it is a contemporary record reflecting the post-2022 UAP reporting architecture formalized under successive National Defense Authorization Act provisions. Those provisions created AARO and established mandatory reporting pathways across federal agencies, including military branches and law enforcement. The FBI's role in UAP documentation has grown within that framework, with the bureau acting as a conduit for reports involving domestic airspace or incidents occurring within U.S. territory. The existence of this submission indicates that coordination between military operators and federal law enforcement around anomalous aerial observations is now a structured, ongoing process rather than an exceptional one.

The crosshair reticle described in the image is characteristic of targeting or surveillance sensor systems — platforms designed to track and record objects of interest in controlled or sensitive airspace. That a military sensor generated this imagery and the FBI subsequently routed it to AARO suggests the observation occurred in or near an operationally significant area of the Western United States. The decision to redact the original imagery before AARO submission is standard security practice, but it does introduce a structural gap between the raw capture and what is available for independent review.

What this does and does not prove

The documented facts are limited but specific: a U.S. military sensor captured a small, dark, circular object over the Western United States in late 2025; the FBI judged the observation significant enough to report formally to AARO; the operator could not positively identify the object; and no explanation has been offered in the public release. What the record does not establish is considerably broader — the object's altitude, speed, trajectory, or behavior are unrecorded; no follow-on investigation is described; and AARO, the FBI, and the Department of War each refrain from asserting any analytical judgment about what was observed. The corrupted timestamp is a documented system limitation, not evidence of manipulation. The redactions create an unavoidable gap between the original capture and the publicly available version. "Unresolved" here means the case has not been explained — nothing more.

How it fits PURSUE Release 01

FBI Photo B4 belongs to the FBI-sourced portion of PURSUE Release 01, a tranche that spans both contemporary filings and historical Bureau documents stretching back to 1947. Unlike the older FBI records in this release — mid-20th-century sighting reports and interagency correspondence — Photo B4 represents the bureau's active, modern reporting pipeline: a 2025 sensor capture routed through AARO's multi-agency intake and released to the public as part of a 162-document set that also includes Department of War mission sensor videos and NASA archive imagery. Taken together, these records make clear that federal UAP documentation is an ongoing institutional function, not a closed historical chapter. Readers can review the full record alongside every other case at the SkyLens UAP files page, or explore other PURSUE Release 01 coverage for additional context across the broader 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.