Two separate events over Arizona are reported as one, and only one has an explanation

Several videos exist, most of them recording the later event: a row of bright lights hanging in the sky south of Phoenix, appearing in sequence and fading in sequence over several minutes. The earlier event, a formation of lights reported moving across the state, is far less well recorded and the footage attributed to it is limited and contested.

Witnesses across Arizona reported a large V-shaped formation of lights travelling south during the earlier event, with many describing it as a single silent object rather than separate lights. Fife Symington, the state governor at the time, publicly ridiculed the reports that year and then, a decade later, said that he had seen the formation himself and could not identify it. For the later event, witnesses described a stationary row of lights, which is consistent with what the videos show.

The Maryland Air National Guard confirmed that A-10 aircraft dropped illumination flares over the Barry M. Goldwater Range on that evening, which accounts for the timing, position, and behaviour of the later lights. That identification is well supported and widely accepted, including by many researchers who remain interested in the earlier event. No agency has offered an identification for the earlier formation. Investigators have proposed that it was a group of aircraft flying in formation, which would explain the lights but is disputed by witnesses who describe an unbroken object between them.

The earlier formation has no established explanation. Because the two events happened the same evening and were reported together, the flare identification is often applied to both, which the evidence does not support. What the earlier witnesses saw, and whether the lights were separate craft or one object, has not been resolved.