FBI Photo B10

Evidence media

Official PDF: Open Sky release-file copy

Derived official PDF page render: FBI Photo B10

The page render shows the released one-page PDF as public viewers receive it: a low-contrast monochrome still with black release/source redaction bars, a white reticle with tick marks and numeric labels, and the visible lower-left timestamp 12/31/99 18:10:50.

Extracted embedded image from official PDF: FBI Photo B10

The extracted raster is the real 1280 × 960 image object embedded in the PDF. It shows the same reticle/redaction layout and a very small dark unresolved speck slightly above and right of reticle center; the release record says the displayed timestamp is incorrect and supplies no public motion, range, altitude, platform, or scene-geometry data.

Investigation reading

This Release 01 item is a one-page FBI PDF containing a still monochrome image. The release description says the FBI submitted it to AARO as an unidentified anomalous phenomenon report derived from a U.S. military system in 2025. It also says the original imagery was altered with redactions before it was submitted to AARO, that no accompanying mission report was provided, and that the operator reported being unable to positively identify the UAP.

The visible page is a low-contrast, grainy frame with a central reticle/crosshair overlay. The only readable text in the page image is the lower-left timestamp 12/31/99 18:10:50. The release record explicitly warns that the date in the image is incorrect because the system date/time was not set, so that display time should not be treated as the event date.

What the file appears to contain

The PDF has one page and one embedded RGB image at 1280 by 960 pixels. The image fills the page in landscape orientation. Several solid black rectangular redaction bars obscure the upper, side, and lower portions of the frame. These bars should be treated as release/source redactions, not scene content.

In the center area, a white measurement-style reticle crosses the frame horizontally and vertically, with tick marks and horizontal labels such as 15, 10, and 5 on both sides of the center. Slightly above the horizontal reticle line and to the right of the vertical reticle line is a very small dark unresolved feature. In the rendered page and enlarged crop it appears as a compact dark dot or irregular pixel cluster against the noisy gray background. It does not show resolved structure, shape detail, motion, scale, range, altitude, or distance in the released image alone.

The official narrative description says the background shows an indistinct mountain range and describes the feature as a small, dark, circular object just to the upper-right quadrant of the reticle center. The visual read-through supports the limited point that a small dark feature is present near that part of the reticle, but the source does not provide enough public context here to identify it or to distinguish among scene object, optical artifact, sensor artifact, compression/noise, or other ordinary image explanations.

Source custody and provenance

Official/source URL: https://www.war.gov/medialink/ufo/release_1/fbi-photo-b10.pdf
Open Sky release-file route: war-gov-fbi-photo-b10-af047a97
Agency: FBI
Release: WAR.GOV/PURSUE Release 01
Source kind: PDF containing a still image
File size: 601,748 bytes
Page count: 1
SHA-256: 1594af0628fa9ae782b86bb3721ae2c1233a0bf0e03e6b45dd82a9badc642aa8
Frontier OCR coverage: 1 page; OCR text contains only 12/31/99 18:10:50
Release-record incident fields: Late 2025, Western United States

One custody note needs follow-up: the Open Sky release-record node for this item is keyed to CSV row 113, while the current CSV copy reviewed for this draft enumerates the same title and official PDF link at row 116. The title, URL, hash, agency, and description match; the row-number discrepancy should be treated as an indexing/custody cleanup lead, not as a conflict about the image content.

Graph context

The graph currently models this item as an official primary Document asset and a separate official release-record Document. It preserves 22 extracted claims, 14 entity mentions, and 4 sensor/platform event records. The sensor/platform records are narrow: they come from source language such as still image and military system; they should not be read as independent radar, telemetry, multi-sensor, or motion evidence.

Related graph navigation points include FBI Photo A7 and FBI Photo B13. Those links are useful for reviewing whether the release contains a related FBI image set, but they are not findings about the B10 feature. The current context for B10 reports no candidate crosslinks.

Leads to check

Locate any unredacted or less-redacted source frame, if it exists and can be lawfully released.
Determine the actual collection date/time, since the visible 12/31/99 timestamp is stated to be incorrect.
Identify the collection platform/sensor type, field of view, reticle meaning, range/altitude metadata, and whether the black bars obscure relevant telemetry.
Compare the PDF image with the official thumbnail and adjacent FBI photo records, especially A7 and B13, to see whether they are part of one image series or separate submissions.
Check for ordinary image explanations before escalation: dust or debris in the optics, sensor blemish, compression artifact, distant aircraft/bird/balloon, terrain contrast, or other optical effects.
Reconcile the row-number discrepancy between the release-record node and the current CSV enumeration.

Lead check notes

Blocked — less-redacted source frame: The Open Sky release-file copy is a single-page PDF with one embedded 1280 × 960 image and no embedded attachments. A less-redacted original, if releasable, is not present in Release 01.
Partial — date/time: The rendered page, extracted raster, and OCR all preserve the lower-left 12/31/99 18:10:50 display, but the release record says the system date/time was not set. The actual collection time remains missing outside the broad Late 2025 release field.
Partial — platform/sensor metadata: The source language says only that the still image came from a U.S. military system. The reticle and redactions are visible, but the public PDF does not expose field of view, range, altitude, platform identity, original video, mission report, or sensor logs.
Partial — adjacent FBI-photo comparison: Current graph/wiki navigation links B10 with FBI Photo A7 and FBI Photo B13 as nearby release records. That is useful context for comparison, but it does not establish that the images are one sequence or one event without source-row and image-level review.
Needs external source — ordinary image checks: Dust/debris, sensor blemish, compression/noise, distant aircraft/bird/balloon, terrain contrast, and other optical-artifact checks need unredacted imagery or collection geometry before they can be responsibly narrowed.
Partial — row-number cleanup: The exact release-record/inventory context preserves row 113, while related manifest-source text can surface row 116 for the same title/URL family. The title, URL, and SHA-256 identify this B10 PDF, so the row difference remains an indexing cleanup lead rather than an image-content conflict.

Deep investigation — graph + web reconnaissance

Source reread and media check

The official-primary file identity was rechecked against the Release 01 metadata: one-page PDF, 601,748 bytes, SHA-256 1594af0628fa9ae782b86bb3721ae2c1233a0bf0e03e6b45dd82a9badc642aa8, PDF metadata title/subject B10 FBI Photo, and one embedded 1280 × 960 RGB image. OCR contains only 12/31/99 18:10:50, matching the lower-left timestamp visible in the page render and extracted raster. The release record says that displayed date/time is incorrect because the system clock was not set, so it remains a visible overlay rather than an event timestamp.

The rendered PDF page and extracted embedded image match: the public page is essentially the raster itself, with no additional visible page-level notes outside the image. The image is low-contrast monochrome/grayscale with heavy noise, black redaction bars, a central white reticle/scale overlay, and a very small dark unresolved mark slightly above and right of reticle center. Other specks are present in the noisy frame, so the small mark should not be treated as an identified object, a motion track, or a scale/range measurement from the still alone.

Read-only graph connections

The graph contains two stable official-primary nodes for this item: the current Release 01 CSV record and the PDF asset at the canonical WAR.GOV URL. Direct text coverage is narrow: the CSV record, linked-asset description, manifest-description chunk, and frontier OCR chunk. Semantic extraction currently contributes 22 machine-extracted claims, 14 entity mentions, and 4 sensor/platform events; those sensor events are generated from source phrases such as still image and military system, with machine_extracted_needs_human_review / not_a_finding status. They are not independent radar, telemetry, multi-sensor, or motion evidence.

Graph navigation still needs custody cleanup. The current release-record relationship is keyed to row 113, while a separate manifest-description context and the FBI western-photo source pack surface row 116 for the same title/URL/hash family. The graph also links nearby FBI photo records such as FBI Photo A7 and a non-current row-116 FBI Photo B13 record. Those links are useful for comparison and deduplication review only; they do not establish that B10, A7, and B13 are one event or one continuous image sequence. No CANDIDATE_CROSSLINK relationship was returned for this asset.

External provenance and official-source checks

The canonical source remains the WAR.GOV/PURSUE PDF URL: https://www.war.gov/medialink/ufo/release_1/fbi-photo-b10.pdf, with the Open Sky release-file copy serving the verified file bytes. Direct live probes of the WAR.GOV PDF, thumbnail, Release 01 landing page, and CSV returned 403 Access Denied during this check, which is an access/custody condition rather than a content contradiction because the cached official-primary file verifies by size and hash.

Internet Archive CDX reconnaissance for the exact official PDF URL returned 200 application/pdf captures from 2026-05-08, including entries with digest XKJEHNBWX5S5S33SDV6N356JG3QT3G5W. Those captures are useful exact-URL provenance leads, but this pass did not byte-compare a Wayback PDF against the verified Open Sky file. A secondary UFO-USA GitHub conversion for 080-FBI_Photo_B10 was reachable and the graph models it as a derived conversion of the official asset; it is not a replacement for the WAR.GOV source. The release CSV fields contain no DVIDS video ID or video/PDF pairing for B10, and DVIDS/AARO/Defense probes did not surface a usable additional official media packet in this pass.

Prosaic checks and limits before escalation

The released evidence is too context-poor for responsible astronomy, weather, launch, satellite, or aircraft-correlation work: the only public incident fields are Late 2025 and Western United States, the visible 12/31/99 timestamp is explicitly unreliable, and the PDF lacks platform, sensor mode, field of view, range, altitude, pointing geometry, original video, mission report, or operator transcript. The first ordinary checks therefore remain image-level: sensor blemish, optical dust or debris, compression/noise, display/reticle overlay artifacts, redaction/processing effects, terrain contrast, or a distant mundane object such as aircraft, bird, or balloon. None can be narrowed without the unredacted source frame or collection metadata.

Follow-up leads

Obtain any less-redacted original frame, official thumbnail package, mission report, sensor log, or AARO/FBI transmittal that establishes collection date, platform, sensor, field of view, and geometry.
Reconcile the row 113 versus row 116 manifest drift and the adjacent A7/B13 graph links at source-row and image-content level.
If Wayback access stabilizes, download an exact archived PDF capture for byte/hash comparison against the verified release-file copy.
Compare B10 visually with adjacent FBI photo records only after each candidate page is independently verified; do not infer sequence or shared event from title proximity alone.

Audit note

This check used the wiki page, verified release-file bytes, OCR, page render, extracted embedded image, read-only Neo4j context, and official/archive web reconnaissance. It did not write to Neo4j and does not create or imply a finding, hypothesis, or resolution decision.

Limits

This is a single released still frame, not a mission report. The release provides no public motion track, no original video, no sensor log, no operator transcript, no range estimate, no altitude estimate, no platform identity, and no independent corroborating source in this file. The date visible in the frame is expressly unreliable. The redactions and absent mission report leave major context gaps. This draft therefore preserves the source content and review leads only; it does not identify the feature or resolve the case.

Sources

WAR.GOV/PURSUE Release 01 PDF: FBI Photo B10
WAR.GOV/PURSUE Release 01 CSV/manifest description for FBI Photo B10
Open Sky release-file record: /api/explore/war-gov/release-file/war-gov-fbi-photo-b10-af047a97
Open Sky Release 01 graph context for official:doc:war-pursue-uap-release:asset:fbi-photo-b10-pdf:af047a976bac