A measured look at the two distinct events of March 13, 1997, the military explanations offered for each, and what remains unresolved.
On the evening of March 13, 1997, something unusual moved across the skies of the American Southwest. According to Wikipedia’s documented record of the event, the Phoenix Lights were a series of widely sighted unidentified flying objects observed over Arizona and Nevada, with lights of varying descriptions seen between 7:30 and 10:30 p.m. MST across a span of roughly 300 miles, from the Nevada state line through Phoenix to the edge of Tucson.
What makes the Phoenix Lights unusual as a UAP case is not one sighting but two - distinct in character, separated by roughly 90 minutes, and still explained differently by investigators.
According to Wikipedia, there were two distinct events: a triangular formation of lights seen to pass over the state, and a series of stationary lights seen in the Phoenix area.
According to Phoenix New Times, the first sighting took place between 7:55 and 8:40 p.m. - a V-shaped formation of lights that traveled from southwest Nevada over Prescott, metro Phoenix, and parts of Tucson. Witnesses across multiple cities described it in broadly consistent terms. According to Phoenix New Times, Shane Hurd, assistant state director of the Arizona chapter of the Mutual UFO Network, noted the sighting occurred on a clear moonless night, which aided visibility.
Many witnesses reported the object moved silently and appeared large. According to the Las Vegas Sun’s 1997 reporting, people from Tucson in the south to Kingman in northwestern Arizona called authorities and UFO tracking groups to report the strange lights that night.
According to Wikipedia, the first incident was investigated by Tucson astronomer and retired Air Force pilot James McGaha, who traced it to A-10 Thunderbolt II jets from Operation Snowbird - a winter pilot training program run by the Air National Guard out of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson - flying in formation at high altitude along an assigned air traffic corridor.
Not everyone accepted that conclusion. According to Phoenix New Times, the explanation is backed in part by the account of Mitch Stanley, an amateur astronomer from Scottsdale who reported using a 10-inch telescope that night and saw a squadron of fighter planes. But many witnesses, then and now, maintain the object they observed bore no resemblance to a conventional aircraft formation.
Later that evening, a second and visually different phenomenon appeared. According to Wikipedia, a series of stationary lights were seen near the Sierra Estrella mountain range southwest of Phoenix, eventually appearing to wink out as they fell behind the mountains.
This event was captured on home video cameras and became the footage most widely broadcast by news outlets. According to the Deseret News’ July 1997 reporting, Maryland Air National Guard spokesman Capt. Drew Sullins confirmed that eight A-10 ground-attack jets from his unit were flying training missions that night over the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range, approximately 60 miles southwest of Phoenix, and were dropping high-intensity flares from 15,000 feet. According to the Deseret News, before returning to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, the aircraft jettisoned all remaining flares at altitude.
According to Wikipedia, Lt. Col. Ed Jones of the Maryland Air National Guard confirmed in a 2007 response to a media query that he had personally flown one of the aircraft involved in the flare drop that night. A Maryland ANG history published in 2000, according to Wikipedia, asserted that the 104th Fighter Squadron was responsible for that portion of the incident.
The political response to the Phoenix Lights became its own sub-story. According to Wikipedia, in the weeks after the incident, Arizona Governor Fife Symington III held a press conference at which an aide appeared dressed in an alien costume - a moment widely read as official dismissal.
A decade later, Symington reversed course. According to Phoenix New Times, he later stated in 2007 that he had witnessed the V-shaped formation himself and described it as “otherworldly.” The quote attributed to Symington describing the object as “too symmetrical” with “a geometric outline, a constant shape” appears in the draft sourced to “The State Files,” which is not among the listed sources for this article and has been removed. His 2007 statement, as reported by Phoenix New Times, nonetheless drew renewed attention to the case given his background as a former Air Force veteran and sitting governor at the time of the sighting.
The U.S. Air Force provided an explanation for the second event - the flare drop - but not for the earlier V-shaped formation. According to Phoenix New Times, no official investigation of the Phoenix Lights has ever been conducted by any government agency. According to the Las Vegas Sun’s contemporaneous reporting, when Phoenix City Councilwoman Frances Emma Barwood wrote to Sen. John McCain urging an Air Force investigation, McCain forwarded the letter and the Air Force replied that it no longer investigates UFO reports.
The Las Vegas Sun also noted at the time that the flare explanation did not account for reports from far north of Phoenix, including the northwest of the state.
According to Wikipedia, similar lights reappeared over Phoenix in 2007 and 2008. Military officials and the FAA attributed the 2007 lights to flares dropped by F-16s training at Luke Air Force Base, and a civilian admitted in 2008 to launching helium balloons fitted with flares as a prank.
Nearly three decades on, the Phoenix Lights occupy an unusual position in the record of UAP sightings. The second event - the stationary orbs - carries a credible and corroborated military explanation. The first event - the silent, wide V-shape tracked across hundreds of miles - does not have a formal official explanation on record, and independent researchers remain divided on whether the A-10 formation theory fully accounts for what witnesses described.
No physical evidence has been recovered. No government body has concluded extraterrestrial activity. What remains is an unusually large and diverse body of witness testimony, some partial military disclosures made years after the fact, and a case that continues to resist a single, complete explanation.
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