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How Much Did Flares Explain in Phoenix?
Flares provide a strong explanation for some later Phoenix sightings, but they do not automatically resolve every report from the night.
On this page
- The later lights south west of Phoenix
- How illumination flares appear at distance
- Why the earlier reports remain separate
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Introduction
Military illumination flares provide a strong explanation for the most familiar Phoenix Lights footage: the row of bright, apparently hovering lights seen south-west of Phoenix at about 10 p.m. on 13 March 1997. Visiting Maryland Air National Guard A-10 aircraft were training over the Barry M. Goldwater Range that night, and military spokespeople later confirmed that high-intensity parachute flares had been released from roughly 15,000 feet. Their location, brightness, slow descent and disappearance behind distant mountains fit the recorded display unusually well.[Las Vegas Sun]lasvegassun.comIt turnLas Vegas SunMilitary now says flares may be cause of mysterious Arizona lights - Las Vegas Sun NewsJuly 25, 1997 — Military now says fla…
That conclusion does not automatically explain every report grouped under the name “Phoenix Lights”. Earlier in the evening, witnesses across Arizona described a moving V-shaped formation rather than a stationary line near the south-western horizon. Those reports require a separate assessment. The central mistake in the debate is therefore not accepting the flare explanation, but stretching it beyond the event it was designed to explain.
The later lights south-west of Phoenix
The best-supported flare identification concerns the lights filmed at around 10 p.m. They appeared in a loose line or arc, remained visible for several minutes and seemed to extinguish one after another. Viewers in the Phoenix area generally saw them towards the Barry M. Goldwater Range, a large military training area lying beyond the Sierra Estrella mountains to the south-west.
In July 1997, Captain Eileen Bienz of the Arizona Air National Guard traced activity that night to visiting A-10 aircraft from the Maryland Air National Guard. A Maryland spokesman said the aircraft had been operating over the range and had dropped high-intensity flares from about 15,000 feet. Before returning to Davis–Monthan Air Force Base, the crews disposed of remaining flares at altitude, producing what one pilot described as a substantial light display. The contemporary report also recognised an important limitation: this activity corresponded closely to the lights captured on video, but did not account for reports originating much farther north earlier in the evening.[Las Vegas Sun]lasvegassun.comIt turnLas Vegas SunMilitary now says flares may be cause of mysterious Arizona lights - Las Vegas Sun NewsJuly 25, 1997 — Military now says fla…
The identification became more persuasive because it was not based solely on a generic claim that military exercises happened somewhere in Arizona. Investigators had a relevant unit, suitable aircraft, a known training range, an approximate release time and a device whose behaviour matched the later observations. The Maryland unit’s official history confirms that the 104th Fighter Squadron operated A-10 aircraft during this period, making the reported mission technically and organisationally plausible.[175th Wing]175wg.ang.af.mil175th WingHistory of the Maryland Air National Guard > 175th Wing > DisplayHistory of the Maryland Air National Guard > 175th Wing > Disp…
Later visual comparisons also supported the explanation. Local television crews recorded subsequent military flare releases that closely resembled the March display. Image analyses aligned night-time footage with daytime views of the Sierra Estrella and found that lights vanished as they reached the apparent mountain ridge, consistent with descending flares being hidden by terrain rather than objects switching off while hovering over the city.[Phoenix New Times]phoenixnewtimes.comWhile conspiracy theoriePhoenix New TimesThe 1997 "Phoenix Lights" are no mystery | Phoenix New TimesThe 1997 "Phoenix Lights" are no mystery | Phoenix New Times…
This terrain test is especially valuable because it offers a check independent of witness interpretation. A light beyond a mountain can look as though it occupies open sky when the ridge itself is invisible in darkness. Once the daylight horizon is correctly registered against the night footage, the sequential disappearances become expected behaviour rather than an unexplained feature.
How illumination flares appear at distance
An illumination flare is not a brief signal flare fired from the ground. It is a powerful light source designed to descend under a parachute and illuminate a wide area for military operations. Modern Air National Guard descriptions of comparable aerial flares state that they can produce about 1.8 million candlepower for four to five minutes, with the parachute slowing the fall while the burning composition lights the ground below.[155arw.ang.af.mil]155arw.ang.af.milAir Force Tech Sgt. Makaio RobHawaii Air Guard conducts flare deployment exercise, prepares for low-light astronaut rescue ops > 155th Air Refueling Wing > Article Dis…
Seen from many tens of miles away, that mechanism can produce several misleading impressions.
They can seem stationary. A flare descending almost vertically at great distance shows little obvious movement across the viewer’s field of vision. Without a visible landscape beneath it, slow downward motion may be interpreted as hovering.
They can form a line or arc. Aircraft may release several flares along a flight path. Perspective compresses the spacing and depth between them, making separate objects look like a deliberate geometric arrangement.
They can appear to drift independently. Each parachute responds to local winds, so the lights need not preserve perfectly equal spacing. Minor drift can make the formation look controlled or responsive even though each flare is simply descending.
They can disappear abruptly. A flare may burn out, but it may also pass behind intervening terrain. In the Phoenix footage, alignment with the Sierra Estrella offered a straightforward reason for several lights to vanish successively at approximately the same apparent level.[tonyortega.org]tonyortega.orgOpen source on tonyortega.org.
Distance also makes brightness a poor guide to size. A very luminous flare can remain conspicuous from far outside the training range, while darkness removes the visual clues needed to estimate how far away it is. Viewers may therefore place it over nearby suburbs rather than over a range many miles beyond the city.
These effects do not require witnesses to be careless or dishonest. Human vision is good at detecting patterns but weak at judging the distance and scale of isolated night-time lights. Once distance is misjudged, apparent speed, altitude and separation are misjudged with it.
Why the earlier reports remain separate
The earlier Phoenix reports differed in time, position and behaviour. From roughly 7.30 to 8.45 p.m., witnesses described lights moving south-east through Arizona, often in a V or wedge formation. Some perceived separate lights; others reported the impression of a single enormous, silent structure. The later flare display, by contrast, appeared close to 10 p.m. in a relatively fixed part of the south-western sky. Treating these descriptions as one continuous object obscures the strongest conventional evidence in the case.[Wikipedia]WikipediaPhoenix Lightsthumb|225px|right|A drawing that appeared in USA Today,June 18, 1997 The Phoenix Lights (sometimes called the "Lights Over Phoenix") were a series of widely sighted unidentified flying objects…
The flare explanation is poorly suited to the earlier sequence. Parachute flares descend within a limited area; they do not travel in an orderly formation across hundreds of kilometres. The Maryland Air National Guard confirmation was tied to operations over the Goldwater Range and to the later lights, not to every observation reported across Nevada and Arizona. Even the first contemporary account of the military finding stated that the flare activity did not appear to cover all reported sightings.[Las Vegas Sun]lasvegassun.comIt turnLas Vegas SunMilitary now says flares may be cause of mysterious Arizona lights - Las Vegas Sun NewsJuly 25, 1997 — Military now says fla…
Keeping the events separate does not mean that the earlier formation was necessarily an extraordinary craft. There is significant evidence for an aircraft explanation. Amateur astronomer Mitch Stanley reported viewing the formation through a telescope and resolving the lights into individual aircraft with lights near their wings. Later local investigations argued that a high-altitude formation could appear silent, move slowly and create the outline of a single dark object when viewed without reliable depth cues.[Phoenix New Times]phoenixnewtimes.comWhile conspiracy theoriePhoenix New TimesThe 1997 "Phoenix Lights" are no mystery | Phoenix New TimesThe 1997 "Phoenix Lights" are no mystery | Phoenix New Times…
That observation is important, but it is not a complete reconstruction of every earlier report. Stanley observed the lights from one location for a limited period, while other witnesses described different apparent heights, shapes and trajectories. Nor was a definitive public flight record produced that identified a particular aircraft formation along the entire reported route. The most defensible assessment is therefore narrower than either popular extreme: conventional aircraft are a credible explanation for the moving V, but the evidence supporting that identification is less complete than the documentation connecting the later display to flares.
What the flare evidence settles
The flare hypothesis is strong because it explains a specific cluster of evidence with few special assumptions: military aircraft were present, suitable illumination devices were released at the relevant time, the viewing direction matched the range, the lights behaved like parachute flares and their disappearance matched the distant terrain.
It also illustrates the risk of discussing a famous UFO case as though it were a single observation. The clearest video evidence in the Phoenix story is attached to the part with the clearest conventional explanation. Meanwhile, the more dramatic descriptions of a vast moving object come chiefly from a different period of the evening and depend more heavily on eyewitness reconstruction. Combining the footage from one event with testimony from the other creates an apparently stronger mystery than either evidence set supports on its own.
The balanced conclusion is that military flares explain the later south-western lights very well and probably account for most of the iconic night-time video. They do not, by themselves, settle what witnesses saw during the earlier moving formation. That earlier episode may also have involved ordinary aircraft, but it must be judged through its own timings, sight lines and testimony rather than being dismissed by evidence from a separate flare release.
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Endnotes
1.
Source: tonyortega.org
Link:https://tonyortega.org/the-phoenix-lights-20-years-later-still-the-same-set-of-planes-and-flares-over-arizona/
2.
Source: 155arw.ang.af.mil
Title: Air Force Tech Sgt. Makaio Rob
Link:https://www.155arw.ang.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/2349481/hawaii-air-guard-conducts-flare-deployment-exercise-prepares-for-low-light-astr/
Source snippet
Hawaii Air Guard conducts flare deployment exercise, prepares for low-light astronaut rescue ops > 155th Air Refueling Wing > Article Dis...
3.
Source: Wikipedia
Title: Phoenix Lightsthumb|225px|right|A drawing that appeared in USA Today,
Link:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Lights
Source snippet
June 18, 1997 The Phoenix Lights (sometimes called the "Lights Over Phoenix") were a series of widely sighted unidentified flying objects...
Published: June 18, 1997
4.
Source: Wikipedia
Title: org104th Fighter Squadron
Link:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/104th_Fighter_Squadron
5.
Source: youtube.com
Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7i4i_2yLK0
Source snippet
Phoenix Lights - The Dark Truth?...
6.
Source: youtube.com
Title: Phoenix Lights
Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1fW1l1sh-A
Source snippet
What really happened on the night of the 'Phoenix Lights'? | NewsNation Prime...
7.
Source: lasvegassun.com
Title: It turn
Link:https://lasvegassun.com/news/1997/jul/25/military-now-says-flares-may-be-cause-of-mysteriou/
Source snippet
Las Vegas SunMilitary now says flares may be cause of mysterious Arizona lights - Las Vegas Sun NewsJuly 25, 1997 — Military now says fla...
Published: July 25, 1997
8.
Source: phoenixnewtimes.com
Title: While conspiracy theorie
Link:https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/arts-culture/the-phoenix-lights-are-no-mystery-6661825/
Source snippet
Phoenix New TimesThe 1997 "Phoenix Lights" are no mystery | Phoenix New TimesThe 1997 "Phoenix Lights" are no mystery | Phoenix New Times...
9.
Source: 175wg.ang.af.mil
Link:https://www.175wg.ang.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/448349/history-of-the-maryland-air-national-guard/
Source snippet
175th WingHistory of the Maryland Air National Guard > 175th Wing > DisplayHistory of the Maryland Air National Guard > 175th Wing > Disp...
10.
Source: anomalydesk.com
Title: phoenix lights
Link:https://anomalydesk.com/phoenix-lights.html
Source snippet
The Phoenix Lights (March 1997) | AnomalyDesk Case File 048July 25, 2026 — The Phoenix Lights (March 1997) | AnomalyDesk Case File 048 Fi...
Published: July 25, 2026
11.
Source: globalsecurity.org
Link:https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems//aircraft/systems/flares.htm
12.
Source: ufouap.net
Title: phoenix lights
Link:https://www.ufouap.net/en/cases/phoenix-lights
13.
Source: decur.org
Title: Phoenix Lights
Link:https://decur.org/cases/phoenix-lights-1997
14.
Source: ufodatalive.com
Title: phoenix lights
Link:https://www.ufodatalive.com/cases/phoenix-lights/
15.
Source: 175wg.ang.af.mil
Link:https://www.175wg.ang.af.mil/About-Us/History/
Additional References
16.
Source: youtube.com
Title: The Phoenix Lights: Unravelling the Greatest UFO Mystery in History
Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=978heKmAXW0
Source snippet
An informative breakdown of the Phoenix Lights incident can be found in The Phoenix Lights: Unravelling the Greatest UFO Mystery in Histo...
17.
Source: youtube.com
Title: What really happened on the night of the ‘Phoenix Lights’? | News Nation Prime
Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBfDVzdWeLw
Source snippet
The Phoenix Lights: Unravelling the Greatest UFO Mystery in History...
18.
Source: youtube.com
Title: The Phoenix Lights
Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SUJTh6Hs-I
Source snippet
Phoenix Lights: One of the greatest UFO mysteries returns after years. Is it aliens or a military...
19.
Source: en-academic.com
Link:https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/9110944
20.
Source: managingexpectations.net
Link:https://www.managingexpectations.net/blog/articles/phoenix-lights-mass-sighting-evidence.html
21.
Source: nationalmuseum.af.mil
Link:https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/196232/USAFmuseum/an-m26-parachute-flares/
22.
Source: nationalmuseum.af.mil
Link:https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/196232/an-m26-parachute-flares/
23.
Source: mykss.com
Link:https://mykss.com/en/article/phoenix-lights-v-formation-mass-sighting-1997-agency-memos-and-hearings-annotated-with-citations/
24.
Source: mykss.com
Link:https://mykss.com/en/article/phoenix-lights-v-formation-mass-sighting-1997-declassified-records-catalogue-with-source-verific/
25.
Source: mykss.com
Link:https://mykss.com/en/article/phoenix-lights-v-formation-mass-sighting-1997-military-and-intelligence-file-summaries-complete-/