So only the planes in the 20:00 event remain unidentified.
Military. The theory is they were A-10s returning to Davis-Monthan from Vegas. This would match up to what Mitch Stanley reported while looking through his telescope and seeing planes in a formation with squarish wings.
FAA lighting requirements do apply to US military aircraft if they are in public airspace, but not if they are in restricted airspace like military ranges and designated exercise areas. Doesn't really matter here, however, if McGaha is correct in saying they had on their formation (position) lights. Your previous statement said they were flying in formation with "only their landing lights on." That made zero sense.
That's untrue.
Article: On January 24, 2003, the USAF was granted an exemption by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to Title 14 CFR Part 91.209(a)(1) and (b), in order to conduct "lights-out" training utilizing NVGs without lighted aircraft position lights in select MOAs [military operations areas].
"Lights-out" training operations are conducted within restricted airspace, warning areas, and, most recently, select MOAs. As a result, nonparticipating general aviation (GA) aircraft share airspace with unlit, high-speed military aircraft conducting training sorties.
This is what I saying in post #44 above....."FAA lighting requirements do apply to US military aircraft if they are in public airspace, but not if they are in restricted airspace like military ranges and designated exercise areas."
@JAFO said landing lights only, that's what I questioned. He further cited McGaha in post #43 as saying "they were flying in formation mode they did not have on their familiar blinking collision lights, but instead their formation lights." He didn't mention landing lights.
Speculation, but again my original post was in reference to @JAFO saying landing lights "only."
Warning areas and MOAs are public airspace.
Yes, civilian aircraft may transit MOAs. I should have explained that better. The point remains the same, however, in that McGaha's blanket comment about FAA rules concerning a/c lighting not applying to military a/c is incorrect. As you pointed out in, even the exemption granting military a/c authority to fly "lights-out" in designated airspace came from the FAA.
It's irrelevant as to whether or not it's "against FAA regulations" or "both dangerous and stupid."
When the landing lights are on, they are so much brighter than the safety lights that it's easy for it to be the case that only the landing light is visible, it just totally drowns out the smaller blinking lights. Especially when relatively far away (the glare is larger relative to the actual light bulb size at far distances than it is at closer distances). If the plane gets a lot closer it can become easier to see both the landing light and the blinking safety lights because more detail is resolvable and the glares are smaller relative to the plane and the distances between the landing light and the blinking lights.
I wonder if @JAFO would accept a "friendly amendment to "in formation with their landing lights on?" This would accord with the testimony of astronomer Mitch Stanley in post https://www.metabunk.org/threads/phoenix-lights.11938/post-311617 above, where the bright light on each plane visible at a distance resolved into two lights (see picture below, seems to match up pretty well), with no mention as to whether additional smaller blinking lights were observed (in the part quoted here, at least.)
Amending to change landing lights to say it was reported/suggested they were flying with only formation lights. These were military A-10s.
The well-known UFO proponent Bruce Maccabee did some triangulation work on the 10:00 pm event on March 13,1997, and came to the conclusion that they were flares, more than 30 miles away, perhaps more than 60 miles away.
Two thousand witnesses who didn't know what they were looking at, versus two witnesses who did, plus a movie that seems to confirm that identification. The 'formation of planes' theory looks pretty good on that evidence.
Triangulating a moving object or group of objects would be a pretty tricky business unless we knew the exact positions of the observers, the exact direction and elevation, and the exact time of the observation. I suspect that very few people could do that if they unexpectedly saw a mysterious object, and even fewer if they were busy staring in amazement. As pointed out before, this was at a time when not everyone had a camera in their pocket.
Wellll...
(1) Perhaps there was no "formation", but rather several different planes flying in roughly the same direction. Pareidolia explains the description of them as being part of a single item or single formation. I have seen the huge number of planes coming in and out of Phoenix, and there's an impressive amount of traffic.
A formation of military craft would typically look to ATC like one craft; to avoid clutter, only the leader would transmit their position, which is sufficient to deconflict the whole group with other traffic in the area: if the leader is safe, so are the other aircraft close by in the formation.
For 3000 ft. width to occupy an angle of 1⁰, with sin 1⁰=0.017, the distance would be 170,000 ft. If the vertical distance is 20,000 ft (why?), then the horizontal distance is 168,819 ft or 30 miles at 8⁰ above the horizon, ±curvature. If it's 1000 ft width, 10 miles.
Because what little actual evidence we have supports the two who saw planes, and is also consistent with the "I saw a triangle of lights" reports from many of the others being lights on planes. If there is corroborating evidence for a huge solid craft bearing the triangle of lights, I am not aware of it. The actual evidence here is not conclusive and pretty sparse. But it all points the same way -- towards a flight of planes from Operation Snowbird.
As to the number of lights:
(Source: https://skepticalinquirer.org/2016/11/the-phoenix-lights-become-an-incident/ Second paragraph.)In the first incident, something described as a large “flying triangle” was sighted during the eight o’clock hour. Five A-10 jets from Operation Snowbird had flown from Tucson to Nellis Air Force Base near Las Vegas several days earlier, and because this was the final night of the operation, they were now returning. The A-10 jets were flying under VFR (visual flight rules), so there was no need for them to check in with airports along the route. They were following the main air corridor for air traffic traveling that route, the “highway in the sky.” (Why a UFO would follow U.S. air traffic corridors is a mystery.) Because they were flying in formation mode, they did not have on their familiar blinking collision lights but instead their formation lights, which look like landing lights (in any case, Federal Aviation Administration rules concerning private and commercial aircraft lights, flight altitudes, etc., do not apply to military aircraft). The A-10s flew over the Phoenix area and flew on to Tucson, landing at Davis-Monthan about 8:45 pm. Some witnesses claim that it was a single huge solid object, but the sole video existing of the objects shows them moving with respect to each other, and hence were separate objects.
It was a formation of 5 such aircraft in a rough V-formation, as shown in Terry Proctor's video of the event.
They don't look symmetric to me, in the Proctor video. At least one of the planes - the closest one - is much further away from the others.
Printy communicated with Stanley by email after the event and cleared up many of the inconsistencies - but of course, this sort of questioning often induces the witness to elaborate on their account and change their story.
Actually 'two'. He was misquoted, or so he said to Printy.
