Question About FAA Required Lighting & Mysterious Aircraft

I'm no aviation expert, so be gentle if I sound like an idiot!
According to FAA rules, all aircraft flying at night are required to have a green light on one wing, a red light on the other and a white light on the tail. Correct?
For the past two weeks, from the time the sun sets to the time the sun rises, our small northern Oklahoma town has been criss-crossed by "mysterious aircraft" flying very low. Some soud like helicopters and move reasonably slow, but I'm certain a few have been some sort of jet screaming by at no more than several hundred feet off the ground. Scary at hell! We're definetly not used to this around here. The super strange part is that there are no red/green lights on them. Just three very bright white strobes. Everytime I hear them coming I jump off the couch and even on the screaming jet type aircraft, it just three white strobes. I've seen the "jets" and "helicopters" from directly underneath on several locations so I know for a fact I'm not just "missing" the red/green lights.
What are these things? Are government/military aircraft exempt from the FAA lighting rules? Have the rules changed?

Oklahoma was actually home the infamous Sonic Boom Tests, over Oklahoma City.. So it likely is military aircraft you are seeing. Wouldn't be the first the USAF was testing something out in that state for sure.



PS. the FAA doesn't regulate or keep records on military aircraft. If for some reason a USAF aircraft is landing/operating in a civilian capacity its receives a temporary flight number from the FAA.

do you have or could you try and get some footage of these aircraft, i too am no expert so could someone comment on lighting regulations for military aircraft? do they have to follow the same lighting rules as civilian/commercial aircraft? then we can determine if these reports are worthy of UFO/secret technology speculation. if the area is well known for military testing though it is most likely to be the military, but i like to keep all avenues open until the facts are presented

All craft should have steady lit red on the port (left) side, green on the starboard (right) side, usually on the wingtips for planes and sides of the fuselage on helicopters and a white light on the rear. These red / green / white lights may not necessarily be visible from the ground. Also, there should be white strobes on the top and bottom of the fuselage and possibly at the tip of the tail and wings, to draw attention particularly in low visibility, and possibly red or white rotating or slowly pulsating lights, which are typically turned on during taxiing, landing and departure from airports.

Landing lights (steady white) and other lights (to light the tail number for instance) may also be on, depending on elevation and what type of craft and what it's doing.

Military craft should follow FAA requirements whenever they are operating in civilian airspace, i.e. not over a military installation.

Many helicopters, particularly law enforcement types, use turbines for power and depending on the actual craft you may only hear the turbines at certain times.

Originally posted by josephamccoy
do you have or could you try and get some footage of these aircraft, i too am no expert so could someone comment on lighting regulations for military aircraft? do they have to follow the same lighting rules as civilian/commercial aircraft? then we can determine if these reports are worthy of UFO/secret technology speculation. if the area is well known for military testing though it is most likely to be the military, but i like to keep all avenues open until the facts are presented

I'll try to get some video tonight, but I'm not sure how much my sh**y iphone camera will pick up. Two last night were flying extremely low and slow. I probably could have gotten some decent footage but I was too busy running around, looking out the windows and freaking out. Lol.

Originally posted by abecedarian
All craft should have steady lit red on the port (left) side, green on the starboard (right) side, usually on the wingtips for planes and sides of the fuselage on helicopters and a white light on the rear. These red / green / white lights may not necessarily be visible from the ground. Also, there should be white strobes on the top and bottom of the fuselage and possibly at the tip of the tail and wings, to draw attention particularly in low visibility, and possibly red or white rotating or slowly pulsating lights, which are typically turned on during taxiing, landing and departure from airports.

Landing lights (steady white) and other lights (to light the tail number for instance) may also be on, depending on elevation and what type of craft and what it's doing.

Military craft should follow FAA requirements whenever they are operating in civilian airspace, i.e. not over a military installation.

Many helicopters, particularly law enforcement types, use turbines for power and depending on the actual craft you may only hear the turbines at certain times.

edit on 2/11/2012 by abecedarian because: (no reason given)

I am absolutely certain they are not displaying green or red lights. They fly over probably 20 times a night and I've seen them from every angle. They're always heading due north or due south. We have a hospital heliport a mile from our home so we're pretty used to seeing helicopters fly into that. They always have the red/green and their landing lights. Also, the hospital helicopters are maybe 1/6th the size of whatever we're seeing fly over at night now, even though they fly in at roughly the same elevation as whatever we're seeing, so it's not a distance=size illusion.
I might add that one last night looked HUGE, like a large chinook or something, but it's hard to make out details in the black sky with bright ass strobes in your eyes.
We have Tinker AFB about 100 miles to our south and McConnel AFB 100 miles to our north, so if they're military I assume they're transiting between the two, but this is a HELL of A LOT of millitary traffic. I've lived here for 10+ years and never experienced anything like this.

reply to post by klhbrown


A few nights ago, the local sheriff was flying a helo over my neighborhood. I could not make out navigation lights on it. It did not make the typical "dldldldldl" or "thwapthwapthwap" rotor sound either. It had 4 white strobes on it, of which 2 started when they turned on the "spot light". How'd I know it was the sheriff? It flew close enough for the street lighting to reflect off its decals. It was literally a few hundred feet from my window and maybe 200 feet off the ground- I could hold my arm out, spread my thumb and pinky fingers as wide as I could, and it was longer than that. The only time I heard the rotor noise was when it was moving away from me and banked left; I couldn't hear anything other than the turbine when it was travelling towards me.

maybe we can get a better idea or reference point if you manage to get some footage or photos even, there are many ATS members that will have dealt with similar images and would probably give an unbiased opinion (that's why i come to ATS).

did you ever manage to get any photos or footage? just checkin in it's been a few days so i thought i'd ask? also i understand if you didn't, it can be quite dodgy taking potos of known aircraft let alone unknown craft. you never know who could be watchin!

Hello, was doing some online research into what I saw back in 2000 and came across this thread. In the summer of 2000 I saw something similar over my hometown which is located in northern Saskatchewan, Canada. I saw a very large plane, the size of a commercial aircraft, all white in color and with only a row of 3 white lights underneath it directly in the middle of it however they were not flashing. So strange for my hometown because we only get small aircraft such as air ambulance and no helicopters except when there is forest fires and there weren't any at the time. What's even more odd is prior to seeing this plane my friends and I were were witnessing a UFO on a beach which was a small oval fireball at first across the lake, then as it came closer to shore it was a mixture of colors including metallic's. This craft was also emitting a pulsating whirring sound "Neeeroo Neeeroo Neeeroo" and beams of lights into the water. We ran after seeing the beams and hearing it thru a yard onto a well lit street and moments later maybe even a minute after we stopped on this street that is when this plane flew over like yours it was also very loud and very low. Anyway I know that this reply doesn't help you in figuring out what this mysterious plane is but I think it's the same kind of plane that I saw and I hope you get pictures of it so I can see if it matches my sighting!

Originally posted by klhbrown
I'm no aviation expert, so be gentle if I sound like an idiot!
According to FAA rules, all aircraft flying at night are required to have a green light on one wing, a red light on the other and a white light on the tail. Correct?
For the past two weeks, from the time the sun sets to the time the sun rises, our small northern Oklahoma town has been criss-crossed by "mysterious aircraft" flying very low. Some soud like helicopters and move reasonably slow, but I'm certain a few have been some sort of jet screaming by at no more than several hundred feet off the ground. Scary at hell! We're definetly not used to this around here. The super strange part is that there are no red/green lights on them. Just three very bright white strobes. Everytime I hear them coming I jump off the couch and even on the screaming jet type aircraft, it just three white strobes. I've seen the "jets" and "helicopters" from directly underneath on several locations so I know for a fact I'm not just "missing" the red/green lights.
What are these things? Are government/military aircraft exempt from the FAA lighting rules? Have the rules changed?

Lockheed has facilities in Fort Worth, TX producing the F-35. I'd guess it's the testing of the Marine Corps STOVL version. Have no idea if it's exempt from rules, but it's possible they are LM owned and not government owned. It's possible they do have red and green but only as a technicality, they are very dim, and the strobes are there to make it hard for people like you to see what the thing actually is while still providing enough visibility to other aircraft for safety purposes.

Last night I witnessed something similar, it was past 9:30pm in the late stages of dusk. I was taking something out the back of my car when I heard a helicopter approaching directly over head. I looked up and saw 1 helicopter that had all its lights on as you'd expect, just in front and to the right of it was another one, although I could see a very faint outline it seemed to be different than the lighted one, it had no lights lights on it whatsoever except a very very faint dim red one on the tail, which I could barely see from the ground. I guesstimate they where about 500-700 feet up and this is a suburban area..so not sure why 1 of these choppers would have no lights on.

a reply to: klhbrown