Hmmm!

I remember seeing that show as well (can't remember what channel aired it however). As such, I am perplexed by a couple of items in both the show and in your comments above.

I'm only aware of two basic types of military aerial flares, those used for battlefield illumination (both artillery- and aircraft-launched) and those used as thermal decoys (countermeasures against heat-seeking missles). The latter type are projectile-like, relatively short-lived (a few seconds) and are launched in small clusters (per TV footage of ground-attack aircraft in action that I've seen); also, if memory serves, they are bright red, not white, like the "flares" in the documentary).

By comparison, the much-longer-lived (roughly a minute or more) battlefield illumination flares are, to my knowledge, uniformally brilliant white, as were the lights in the documentary. Equally important, they are also equipped with small parachutes to slow their descent, thus greatly extending their period of illumination and the size of the area illuminated. Also, to my knowledge, all flares produce quite a trail of dense smoke. Even at rather long range, both the parachutes and the smoke from such flares are clearly visable in the brilliant light produced by the flare itself. No chutes or smoke seemed to be present, even it the video enlargements you mentioned, hence the suspicion that they were not military flares. Also, I seem to remember that the local military denied using any flares in the area that night, at least initially.

Further, JUST SPECULATING on that very large, silent, chevron-shaped (as I remember) UFO (in the literal sense of that term) seen by several witnesses earlier: If that UFO was flying around Phoenix, testing the ability of the AP radar to detect it, at its reported size it would have been a real hazard to any aircraft in the area. Maybe, just maybe, the "flares" that disappeared beyond the mountain were emergency lights on the "UFO", turned on in sequence to avoid a potential collision and, as part of its immense physical dimensions, disappearing behind the mountain just like an air-dropped "string" of flares would.

Jump in, Folks! (I really wish I could see that documentary again, to verify what I remember above.)

DTW