Military Aircraft Night Lighting

[The Wookie]

Spotted what looked distinctly like 3 military jets (probably American, lots of F15's knocking around) doing manouvres above Attleborough one night last week, oddly enough despite a few turns all I could make out was a single red light and a white strobe on each of the aircraft.

It seems they've been reported as UFO's by some local-ish (Yarmouth) journalists

Obviously terrestrial in origin , but it did seem odd that they'd be flying around without any green lights going. Am I mistaken, is it normal?

[Eric Mc]

Provided they are operating in a dedicated miltary training area, they can chose the lighting configuration they want - including no lights at all. On an actual operation, military aircraft tend not to turn their lights on - for obvious reasons.

[The Wookie]

That would explain it, they were flying in reasonably close proximity. Training exercise with minimal lighting to prevent collisions perhaps

[Eric Mc]

The F-15 has a strip of low intensity lights on the side fuselage which glow at a fairly low level for night formation flying.

[Taffer]

Eric Mc said:

The F-15 has a strip of low intensity lights on the side fuselage which glow at a fairly low level for night formation flying.

Quite a lot of military aircraft are now fitted with electroluminescent (sp?) panels - for carrier operations they probably make the deck a bit safer to work at night. Similar lights are also now used on Le Mans racers' number panels as well.

[siko]

The Wookie said:

Spotted what looked distinctly like 3 military jets (probably American, lots of F15's knocking around) doing manouvres above Attleborough one night last week, oddly enough despite a few turns all I could make out was a single red light and a white strobe on each of the aircraft.

It seems they've been reported as UFO's by some local-ish (Yarmouth) journalists

Obviously terrestrial in origin , but it did seem odd that they'd be flying around without any green lights going. Am I mistaken, is it normal?

Ok I'll bite seeing as nobody else has! They use Night Vision Device compatible formation lights, which unsurprisingly, can only be seen by other users on NVDs. The Red/white lights were purely to make them legal to fly in the UK FIR, you can fly without lights as previously alluded to, but you need various special permissions.