The Phoenix Lights were a wonderful example of disinformation, and how to destroy the credibility of both a story and witnesses by flooding the media with a combination of denial and false information.
To start with, the event began just at sundown and the start of EENT (End of Evening Nautical Twilight), when visibility is quite good.
Some variety of what was most likely an experimental, V-shaped US Air Force Aircraft, capable of hovering, had some kind of mechanical breakdown at between an altitude of one and three hundred feet over a residential area in Phoenix. The end result was that it just sat there, hovering, for about an hour or more, with only slow drift because of very light evening winds.
Otherwise, it produced only very minimal noise, certainly nothing like typical engine noise.
People left their houses and cars, some of whom had cameras, and one of whom had a video camera, shooting at the aircraft and the lights on its underside, about 150 feet over his house for over 10 minutes.
Eventually, it was able to develop slow momentum, and was able to move away from the city. By then, night had fully fallen, and it was no longer visible. Then the fun began in earnest.
Initially, the hundreds of reports flooding the local news channels, including a Phoenix city councilwoman, were taken at face value, but by the 10pm news, denials were already being issued. The councilwoman was bluntly told to shut up, that she was seeing things as was a nut.
Within days, a flood of totally unrelated information was filling the local news, covering the gamut with such things as “other UFOs seen other places”, “UFOs as a part of conspiracy culture”, “Air Force and local radar see nothing, deny everything”, “local residents insist they saw UFOs, afraid of being branded kooks”, “weather balloons or flares, which was it?”, etc. The local news showed video of the Phoenix skyline at night taken from the top of a high rise building, and said they could see no UFO there. Well, duh.
It was an impressive display of bad information pushing out good, and a little non-subtle intimidation.
The truth of the matter is that, if you are flying lower than commercial aircraft, in a helicopter or whatever, the only flight corridor you can take from North to South through northern Arizona, which is where you would be heading if you were coming from Nevada, specifically Groom Lake AB (which does not exist), is approximately over the North-South Verde River. This would put you right where the Phoenix Lights were seen.
It was most likely heading to or from the California coast off of San Diego, which is one of the few places you can fly aircraft at supersonic speeds. This still annoys San Diego a lot, who protest it.
People saw the Phoenix Lights all the way from Henderson, Nevada, just outside Las Vegas, through several other Arizona towns North and South of Phoenix, though they disappeared South of Phoenix, about where the freeway turnoff is for San Diego. Surprise, surprise.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_lights
Why I find this as being so utterly unimpressive is because we *want* the Air Force to develop advanced aircraft. And we *want* them to keep their advanced designs secret from our enemies as long as possible. And no, the public does not have a need to know about our secret military weapons.
So the bottom line is, yes, the Phoenix Lights were a UFO.
It is not our business. Any more than if some general left a briefcase full of Top Secret papers at a truck stop.