Military flares - rather than UFOs - might be behind those mysterious, bright lights that caused such a stir in Arizona four months ago.
Visiting jets from the Maryland Air National Guard were using high-intensity flares over a bombing range near Phoenix the night of March 13, when many people reported seeing lights, military officials said Friday.The flares would have created quite a light show in southwestern Arizona. The lights, captured on videotape, created a media frenzy when the tape aired nationally last month.
Capt. Drew Sullins, a spokesman for the Maryland Air National Guard, said eight of its A-10 ground-attack jets were flying training missions that night over the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range, 60 miles southwest of Phoenix.
The planes were dropping high-intensity flares from 15,000 feet to illuminate the target area, Sullins said. The flares fall slowly by parachute and illuminate a wide area.
Before returning to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson that night, the planes dumped all their remaining flares at high altitude, which would have created what one pilot called "one hell of a light show," Sullins said.
But the flare explanation may not solve the mystery. It doesn't explain sightings that came from northwestern Arizona - up to 200 miles away.
And Frances Emma Barwood, the Phoenix city councilwoman who's been pushing for the Air Force to investigate the lights, said the explanation was just too convenient.
"If that is their explanation then they need to do a re-enactment so people can say that's what they saw or not what they saw," she said.