PURSUE Record — FBI Photo B8: FBI · Western United States · Late 2025

FBI Photo B8 is a declassified PDF released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on May 8, 2026, as part of PURSUE Release 01 — the U.S. Department of War's first coordinated public disclosure of UAP records. The document contains a single still image derived from a U.S. military system, captured in late 2025 somewhere over the Western United States, and submitted by the FBI to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). It is one complete file part within the broader 162-document release.

What this record contains

The record is a single-part PDF submitted by the FBI to AARO. The source image was captured by a U.S. military system during late 2025 in the Western United States, though no accompanying mission report was provided alongside the submission. The original imagery was altered with redactions before reaching AARO, meaning the public version is a processed derivative of the raw source data rather than an unmodified original.

The official narrative description details a monochrome, grainy image with a central crosshair reticle — characteristic of targeting or sensor displays common to military optical and infrared systems. A small, dark, circular object is visible just right of center in the top right quadrant, set against what the description characterizes as an indistinct mountain range background. The release explicitly flags that the date stamp visible in the image is incorrect, caused by the system's clock not having been properly configured — a procedural detail acknowledged rather than left as an unexplained discrepancy. The operator reported being unable to positively identify the UAP.

Historical & documentary context

Despite the FBI's long association with Cold War-era UAP files — the Bureau maintained investigation records on aerial phenomena dating back to at least 1947 — FBI Photo B8 is not a historic case. The late-2025 incident date places it firmly within the contemporary AARO-era reporting framework, established by the National Defense Authorization Acts of 2022 and 2023, which mandated centralized UAP reporting across military, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies. The FBI's role here reflects that newer institutional posture: federal agencies now have a defined channel for forwarding unresolved encounters to AARO, even when supporting documentation is incomplete.

The absence of an accompanying mission report is a meaningful gap in the record. Without it, there is no public basis for reconstructing the sensor's altitude, range to the object, atmospheric conditions, or operational parameters at the time of capture. The incorrect date stamp compounds the difficulty of independent temporal reconstruction. What survives in the public record is the image itself, the submitting agency, and the operator's stated inability to make a positive identification.

What this does and does not prove

What the public record establishes is narrow: a U.S. military system captured a monochrome image in late 2025 showing a small, dark, circular object against a mountain background, the operator could not identify it, and the FBI subsequently submitted that image — redacted — to AARO. The record does not establish what the object was, its size, distance, velocity, or whether it represents anything anomalous at all. The official description explicitly states it should not be interpreted as an analytical judgment or factual determination regarding the event's nature or significance. That disclaimer is standard across the PURSUE release, and it applies with particular weight here given the thinness of the supporting documentation.

How it fits PURSUE Release 01

FBI Photo B8 belongs to the FBI-submitted portion of PURSUE Release 01, a category that bridges the Bureau's historic UAP archive role and its more recent AARO reporting function. The full release — catalogued on the SkyLens UAP files page — spans 162 documents drawn from military sensor systems, NASA archives, and FBI files across decades. Within that set, B8 is one of the sparser contemporary records: a single image, no mission report, redacted source data, and an unresolved finding. It represents the release's willingness to surface unresolved cases without forcing analytical conclusions — the gap in the record is documented honestly rather than filled with inference. For broader coverage of the PURSUE cases, see 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.