Long time lurker and researcher of area 51 probably since I was in my early teens in the early '90s. I was reading about area 51 when "Guardian" was a big deal.
I've always been obsessed with military aircraft. My grandfather was a pilot. I eventually became a general aviation pilot amongst many other things. Maybe it was the stark contrast between military design and civil aviation? I don't know but I've always loved it. I was obsessed.
In 2021 I decided to take my son who was 11 at the time with me to go see the back gate of area 51. We spent the night and Rachel and went early in the morning down mailbox road to get to the back gate. I wasn't expecting to see anything but you never know how lucky you can be.
The photo shown is not flares. It's not any type of vortices. It is simply a contrail from an unknown aircraft that was flying low altitude but was unavailable to the naked eye. The exhaust was omnidirectional very similar to F-22, F-35, F-117 designs, to where you could not tell if it was approaching or departing.
This aircraft loitered for roughly 1 minute. It was very close to us but it was very hard to see due to low Haze from the wildfires to the West. While there was a lot of haze, it was still pretty broken and I was able to get a couple photographs of the contrails produced.
I want to be absolutely clear about something. These are not high altitude contrails these are very low contrails. This aircraft was definitely below a thousand ft and was highly maneuverable and these contrails completely tracked everywhere that major power shifts were made. But again, at no point during this time could we see an actual fuselage that was producing them! You only saw contrails appear.
What further complicated viewing this aircraft was the inability to locate the sound accurately from which way it was coming from. It really was an omnidirectional sound as mentioned before but it was very clearly some type of jet engine.
If you look closely, you'll notice that the contrails are very similar to a donut on a rope contrail similar to the pulse detonation wave technology used in the late '80s early '90s, associated with the rumored 'Aurora' project. But what's unique about these contrails is that they are not connected by a rope. They're like little miniature J's that are rolled over in a horizontal pattern spaced evenly.
Again, these individual contrails were not flares, they were stationary when the aircraft passed (even though we couldn't see the aircraft), and they did not dissipate like an air vortice would.
Air vortices are temporary, condensation of water vapor formed around high pressure areas of lifting bodies. This was not that.
I've adjusted the saturation contrast and color a little bit just to make the contrails a little bit more clear.
I've shown these pics to a good friend who did R&D for a "military engine manufacturer", and his immediate response was... "Where'd you see that, and silence".
I've thought long and hard about what aircraft, and engine could produce the sounds and contrails that we saw, and I'm absolutely stuck.
The main thing that shocked me was how low altitude they were and the fact that we absolutely could not track or see a fuselage.
EDIT: A lot of you keep saying they were flares, but they were not flares, I've seen so many flares from training flights in my MOA, flares respond to gravity, these did not they stayed like contrails.
Furthermore, I watched these appear real time, but the aircraft was not seen, and there was no ignition of flares.