I see a aircraft (plane or jet), flashing something?

Ok so this I suspect Helicopter (Its 4 am almost), (Human in origin, not a UFO), and its kind of circling around this area (Not me specifically), but ive never seen what its doing before.

Its got a red light I can see, making a normal aircraft loud noise since its relatively low, but every couple or so seconds three quick white flashes are coming out of its nose area. Is this how they map or use infrared? The flashes are all in the space of around half a second.

Its like a * kind of look at its nose (What it looks like, and its not a beam of light or nothing, but rather just 3 quick very fast flashes probably about 100ms in between every couple or so seconds.

Can still hear it, im inside atm. Its happening just flying in a circle or such around the area, obviously looking at something. I didn't know where to post this so I did it in these forums.

sounds like just a variation on navigation lighting. When I began investigating UFO sightings I quickly learned that the flash patterns and placement of the lights on aircraft actually vary widely. This came up as a result of a sighting in which the plane was using a quad flash arrangement I had never seen despite growing up on an air force base.

The new flash patterns are usually strobes known as the "comet" which use multiple flashes to increase visual "on" time. These are replacements for lights which were formally rotating beacon types.

The 3 flash pattern is a well known helicopter pattern, btw.