I am currently researching this material as I prepare for the McMinnville Oregon UFO festival where the Phoenix Lights incident of 1997 is the featured topic for the weekend. On March 13, 1997 around the time of 7:30 P.M reports of strange lights in the sky began to trickle in from anxious eyewitnesses in Arizona and Nevada. Lights that seemed to be surrounding aircraft of some kind. By 9:30 that evening, thousands of reports had come in. The lights were described as either a circular or V shape. The descriptions of the craft were hazy in specifics but universal in the perception of how large it appeared to be. Many witnesses took pictures and video. When the military were asked if they had any knowledge of the incident they claimed that they knew nothing about it.
Obviously, they lied.