PURSUE Record — FBI Photo B6: FBI · Western United States · Late 2025

FBI Photo B6 is a declassified PDF released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on May 8, 2026, as part of PURSUE Release 01 — the first coordinated UAP document release under the U.S. Department of War. The record documents a UAP encounter that occurred in late 2025 in the Western United States, captured by a U.S. military imaging system and subsequently submitted to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). The operator was unable to positively identify the object. The file is a single-part document, and the imagery it contains was redacted before submission.

What this record contains

The record is a single PDF submitted by the FBI to AARO, originating from a U.S. military system. The precise location is given only as the Western United States, and the incident date is described as late 2025. No accompanying mission report was provided alongside the image. Notably, the date embedded within the image itself is acknowledged to be incorrect — the result of the system's internal clock not being properly configured — which limits the ability to independently verify the timing of the capture.

AARO's official narrative description characterizes the image as a monochrome photograph with a grainy texture and a central crosshair reticle. Just above the reticle, a dark, structured object with an appendage on its left side is visible. A second, smaller, dark circular object appears below the reticle in the bottom right quadrant. The release states explicitly that this narrative is "provided for informational purposes only" and does not constitute "an analytical judgment, investigative conclusion, or factual determination regarding the described event's validity, nature, or significance." Beyond these documented details, the public release does not include operational context, altitude data, sensor specifications, or any indication of whether follow-up investigation was conducted.

Historical & documentary context

Unlike the mid-twentieth-century FBI files elsewhere in PURSUE Release 01 — records that emerged from the Bureau's involvement in the original "flying disc" investigations of the late 1940s and 1950s — FBI Photo B6 is an entirely contemporary document, originating in late 2025. The FBI's role here reflects its modern national security mandate: under the reporting architecture formalized by the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act and the creation of AARO, federal agencies with relevant sensor data or encounters are required to submit that material for centralized analysis. The Bureau's participation in this pipeline is not extraordinary; it is procedural.

The imagery type described — monochrome, structured around a targeting or surveillance reticle — is consistent with military optics systems used for reconnaissance and situational awareness. Such systems are optimized for detection rather than identification: they can register an object's presence at distance but frequently lack the resolution, spectral range, or calibration metadata needed to determine what that object is. The absence of a mission report compounds this ambiguity considerably. Without knowing the platform, the sensor's field of view, the approximate distance to the observed objects, or the operational context of the mission, even a detailed image description yields limited interpretive value.

What this does and does not prove

The documented facts here are deliberately narrow. A U.S. military system captured a monochrome image in late 2025 somewhere in the Western United States. The operator, at the time of capture, could not identify what they were looking at. The FBI received the image, applied redactions, and submitted it to AARO. The system clock was misconfigured, making the embedded timestamp unreliable. AARO's narrative describes two dark objects in the frame — one structured with an appendage, one smaller and circular — but this description is a characterization of what appears in the image, not a determination of what the objects are. Nothing in the public record establishes the objects' size, altitude, velocity, or origin. The case remains unresolved, which in AARO's framework means it has not been explained — not that any anomalous or extraordinary explanation has been validated.

How it fits PURSUE Release 01

FBI Photo B6 sits within the contemporary military-submitted records that form part of PURSUE Release 01's 120-PDF body. The full release — spanning 162 documents across 28 videos, 14 images, and 120 PDFs — draws on AARO-coordinated submissions, NASA archive materials, and FBI files ranging from 1947 to the present. This record represents the Bureau's contribution of recent sensor data to that cross-agency effort. Readers interested in the full scope of the FBI submissions and how they compare with the Department of War mission reports and NASA archival imagery can explore the complete PURSUE Release 01 catalogue, and further editorial coverage of individual cases is available on the SkyLens PURSUE blog series.

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.