FBI Photo A2

FBI Photo A2 is an official WAR.GOV / PURSUE Release 01 still-image item attributed to the FBI. The release says the image came from a U.S. government system, was submitted to AARO, and was already altered with redactions before submission. The incident window is only Late 2025; the location is N/A. No accompanying mission report was provided, and the operator statement preserved by the release says the UAP could not be positively identified.

This page is a graph-investigation draft. It records what the released file, OCR, source description, and graph context contain without turning them into an identification, hypothesis, or finding.

Evidence media

This is the verified official Release 01 PNG for FBI Photo A2: a low-resolution monochrome sensor-style still with redacted display areas, a central reticle, and a compact dark rounded feature near the reticle center. The image should be read as the released still frame only; it does not provide motion, range, platform, time, location, or object identity.

Investigation reading

The available source package is narrow: one PNG still image, one short OCR extraction, the official Release 01 description, and graph records derived from that material. The verified public-release file is a 538 × 321 RGBA PNG, 98,192 bytes, with SHA-256 7f7133940153eee809eb6389316bbd1b17bcb29059685c3f2d0e2ef67c4e33b8.

Visual inspection shows a low-resolution monochrome frame inside a black margin with a thin light border. Several solid black redaction blocks cover display areas around the top and sides. A targeting-style reticle sits near the center: a vertical dashed line, a horizontal line with small tick marks, and a central crossing area. A compact dark rounded or oval feature is close to the reticle center, mostly just below the horizontal reticle line and slightly right of the center point. A small white numeral 5 is visible to the right of the reticle.

The background is mottled grayscale with no clear horizon, landmark, scale reference, or identifiable environment. The official narrative calls the feature a dark circular object at the center of the reticle, but the public still alone cannot establish physical nature, size, range, speed, independent motion, or significance. Reticle placement shows only that the feature is near the center of the released frame; it does not by itself prove tracking or lock.

What the file appears to contain

• One official FBI still image released as fbi-photo-a2.png.
• A grayscale sensor-style display frame with reticle markings and redacted surrounding display fields.
• A compact dark rounded/oval feature near the reticle center, slightly below/right of the crossing.
• A mottled, uneven background with no reliable scale or location markers.
• A readable numeral 5; the rest of the OCR-visible text is redaction markers.
• No motion sequence, no paired mission report in this file, and no visible unredacted timestamp, platform label, sensor mode, coordinates, or range.

The controlling official description says the FBI submitted a UAP report to AARO consisting of a still image from a U.S. government system; the date and location were not provided; the original imagery was redacted before submission; no mission report was provided; and the operator could not positively identify the UAP. The same description cautions that its narrative is informational only and is not an analytical judgment, investigative conclusion, or factual determination.

Source custody and provenance

The verified Release 01 copy is the exact redacted PNG described by the hash above. The direct official media URL is preserved as source custody, while the Open Sky release-file route serves the public-release copy for review.

OCR / visible text

The full OCR text available for this item is:

=== Page 1 ===
[REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED]

[REDACTED] [REDACTED]

[REDACTED] [REDACTED]
                              5
[REDACTED] [REDACTED]

[REDACTED] [REDACTED]

The OCR does not expose operational metadata. It is effectively limited to redaction markers and the numeral 5 visible in the frame.

Graph context

The graph has exact official-primary records for this item as ImageEvidence (official:image:war-pursue-uap-release:fbi-photo-a2-png:ba30b5fdb4f6) and as a Release 01 Document record (official:doc:war-pursue-uap-release:record:c03da32d473f18b9). The semantic layer currently preserves 11 extracted claims, 7 entity mentions, 1 machine-extracted STILL IMAGE sensor-event record, and 3 text chunks: manifest description, OCR text, and CSV record text. Those are provenance and audit aids, not findings.

Source-backed graph claims include the FBI/AARO custody chain, the still-image nature of the file, redaction before AARO submission, absence of an accompanying mission report, the operator’s inability to positively identify the UAP, and the official description’s own warning that the narrative is not a determination.

The graph also surfaces related context for DOW-UAP-PR48, Unresolved UAP Report, INDOPACOM, 2024 / DVIDS 1006110, plus a related record for FBI Photo A5. Those links are catalog/provenance leads only. They do not establish that FBI Photo A2, PR48, and FBI Photo A5 depict the same event, platform, object, or observation.

Leads to check

1. Audit the row mapping before using row anchors publicly: the image asset is tracked as row 108, while the graph document record carries row 105 and DVIDS 1006110.
2. Determine whether DVIDS 1006110 is a true companion record, a release-table collision, or only adjacent catalog context.
3. Compare FBI Photo A2 with FBI Photo A5 and the broader FBI Photo A-series for shared reticle style, redaction layout, background texture, and release grouping.
4. If less-redacted imagery or a sequence becomes available, check whether the central dark feature persists across frames and whether display fields provide time, platform, range, sensor mode, or tracking context.
5. Treat the visual term “circular” cautiously because the frame is low-resolution, redacted, and possibly affected by blur, contrast, compression, sensor mode, or processing.

Lead check notes

• Partial — row/DVIDS mapping: the asset inventory and ImageEvidence record identify A2 as image row 108, while the Release 01 Document record carries row 105 and DVIDS 1006110. The linked PR48 page treats the shared DVIDS ID as a row-collision/provenance-cleanup issue, not evidence of a shared event.
• Partial — A-series comparison: current wiki and graph context link A2 to FBI Photo A5, and the A5 page links A2/A8 as catalog neighbors. The pages share the broad redacted sensor-still pattern, but no source establishes the same platform, event, sequence, or object.
• Blocked — less-redacted sequence/source package: the public A2 release exposes one redacted PNG, OCR limited to redaction markers and the numeral 5, and no mission report, timestamp, location, sensor mode, range, track, or adjacent frames. Persistence, motion, and ordinary image checks require the original collection package or less-redacted imagery.
• Checked — visual wording limit: the official description says “dark, circular object”; the released image supports only a compact dark rounded/oval feature near the reticle. Keep “circular” as source language and avoid object classification from this still alone.

Deep investigation — graph + web reconnaissance

Source reread

A fresh reread of the Release 01 inventory record, OCR text, and verified PNG keeps A2 in a narrow evidence lane: it is a native PNG still image, not a PDF-photo container or video. The public-release copy is a 538 × 321 RGBA PNG, 98,192 bytes, with SHA-256 7f7133940153eee809eb6389316bbd1b17bcb29059685c3f2d0e2ef67c4e33b8.

The controlling source text says the FBI submitted a UAP report to AARO consisting of a still image derived from a U.S. government system; the date and location were not provided beyond Late 2025 / N/A; the image was altered with redactions before submission; no accompanying mission report was provided; and the operator reported that they could not positively identify the UAP. The same source description warns that the narrative is informational only and is not an analytical judgment, investigative conclusion, or factual determination.

The image reread confirms a low-resolution monochrome sensor-style frame with a central reticle, black redaction blocks around display fields, mottled grayscale background, and a compact dark rounded/oval feature just below and slightly right of the reticle crossing. OCR remains effectively non-operational metadata: redaction markers plus the visible numeral 5. A small upper-frame numeral or mark may be visible in the image, but the released file does not expose readable date, coordinates, platform label, sensor mode, range, or track data.

Graph connections

Read-only graph checks match two exact official-primary records: the ImageEvidence node official:image:war-pursue-uap-release:fbi-photo-a2-png:ba30b5fdb4f6 and the Release 01 Document node official:doc:war-pursue-uap-release:record:c03da32d473f18b9. The graph preserves three text chunks around this item: the release-record CSV text, the official manifest-description text, and the frontier-OCR text. It also preserves 11 machine-extracted claims, 7 entity mentions in the semantic page metadata, and one machine-extracted STILL IMAGE sensor-event record. These remain machine_extracted_needs_human_review / not_a_finding audit material, not a finding or resolution.

The graph exposes an important custody tension: the image asset is current Release 01 row 108, while the Release 01 Document record for A2 carries CSV row 105 and DVIDS context for Video ID 1006110. Direct graph matching by title, URL, and full-download hash found the exact A2 ImageEvidence plus the A2 release-record document; it did not turn up another same-hash A2 media node. The RELATED_TO edge from A2 to DOW-UAP-PR48, Unresolved UAP Report, INDOPACOM, 2024 / DVIDS 1006110, and the nearby A5 relationship, should therefore stay in the provenance-cleanup lane unless a future source package proves shared event custody.

External provenance and context

The canonical A2 source remains the WAR.GOV / PURSUE Release 01 image URL and CSV manifest. Direct official fetches to the WAR.GOV landing page, CSV, and A2 PNG returned 403 Access Denied during this check, so the verified cached release-file copy and graph/inventory hashes are the audit anchor for now.

The DVIDS page attached to Video ID 1006110 was reachable and describes a different public item: DOW-UAP-PR48, Unresolved UAP Report, INDOPACOM, 2024, a one-minute-and-39-second infrared-sensor video from a U.S. military platform, with DVIDS Date Taken 01.01.2024, Date Posted 05.08.2026 07:50, and location (UNDISCLOSED LOCATION). That official DVIDS context is useful because it makes the A2/DVIDS link look like a row or catalog collision, not corroboration that FBI Photo A2 and PR48 depict the same observation.

Prosaic checks and blockers

Responsible ordinary-cause checks are blocked by missing basics: exact time, location, platform, sensor model, field of view, range, range rate, coordinates, weather, and sequence context. With only a redacted still, astronomy, satellite, launch, air-traffic, weather, geography, and local activity checks cannot be run responsibly.

The first prosaic lanes are image-level and custody-level: redaction, low resolution, compression/processing, blur, display-overlay/reticle interpretation, contrast against mottled background, and the possibility that a single dark feature near a reticle is a sensor/display/scene artifact or ordinary object lacking scale. None of those lanes can identify the feature from the released still; they only define what must be checked before escalation.

Follow-up leads

• Reconcile the row mapping: image asset row 108 versus release-record row 105 and DVIDS 1006110 context.
• Keep PR48/DVIDS 1006110, FBI Photo A5, and the broader A-series as catalog-neighbor leads only until source-level custody proves or rules out a shared sequence.
• Seek less-redacted imagery, adjacent frames, the original collection package, or a mission report before attempting motion, size, range, platform, or environment analysis.
• If future releases provide time/location/platform data, rerun weather, astronomy, satellite/launch, air-traffic, and local-activity checks from those source fields.

Audit note

This section is based on the existing wiki page, verified release-file metadata and OCR, a direct visual reread of the PNG, read-only Neo4j queries, and official-source web reconnaissance. No graph writes were made, and no finding, hypothesis, or resolution decision is asserted.

Limits

• This page does not identify the feature as an aircraft, balloon, drone, bird, debris, ground object, sensor artifact, or any other object class.
• A single still frame does not show motion, acceleration, heading, altitude, distance, size, or independent movement.
• With location listed as N/A, responsible weather, astronomy, satellite, launch, local air-traffic, and geography checks cannot be run from this file alone.
• Redactions remove the display fields most likely to hold sensor, platform, timestamp, and location context.
• The official source itself says the narrative description is informational and not a determination of validity, nature, or significance.

Sources

• Official/source image URL: https://www.war.gov/medialink/ufo/release_1/fbi-photo-a2.png
• WAR.GOV / PURSUE Release 01 CSV/image asset record: FBI Photo A2, image row 108
• Release-record graph row context: 105
• DVIDS context carried by the release-record node: https://www.dvidshub.net/video/1006110
• Open Sky release-file route: /api/explore/war-gov/release-file/war-gov-fbi-photo-a2-ba30b5fd
• Open Sky source dataset: war_pursue_uap_release_2026_05_08
• Open Sky semantic dataset: war_pursue_release01_semantic_2026_05_12
• Graph exact records: the ImageEvidence and Document records listed above

All claims on this page are source-text claims, media observations, or investigation leads. This page is not an adjudication, not a resolution decision, and not a claim of completed human review.