Wondering if anyone’s had a similar sighting

I’ll preface with saying I’m very skeptical of recent claims (or ‘leaks’) from individuals at congress etc., but I did see something that still gives me chills today ~13 years later because I don’t have a clue what it was I saw.

When I was around 12-13 in 2010-2012, reading Harry Potter in my room at around 2am in front of my window (live on a small mountain outside of a small town in the Appalachian mountains, I could see planes circle and land at a major airport on the horizon about 50 miles away so I liked to sit there and watch), I looked up and saw around 10 floating lights that seemed relatively low and close, in the direction of an army ranger base nearby. They were all somewhat together in the air.

It was a very clear and dark night, and they were a bit brighter than venus is in the night sky. Then 3 or 4 of them started moving around separately at insane speeds, almost like lasers being waved with someone’s hand. But it was not a cloudy night at all, I could see stars and planets as well. The rest of the lights stayed perfectly still, and the moving ones would come to a quick stop within about 3 seconds and then shoot across the sky again in a random direction almost instantly. But they never left my line of sight and would come back to the group of lights. This kept going on and after a couple hours of watching I went to bed.

I know they do heli training here, but these things were moving faster than anything I’ve ever seen. Occasionally, one of the still lights would disappear and another light would come on in another place in the pack of lights. Which lines up with my heli hypothosis as I saw the circling planes do that at the airport every night. But the moving ones have never made sense. I’ve recently seen videos people have posted with lights moving in a similar way, especially the one someone took on their phone while recording Starlink. It’s faint, but the light that goes over starlink in this vid moves in the same exact way as what I saw.

I wish I’d have had a smart phone to record it with at the time, because no one believes me when I tell them about it or say I’m exaggerating. In my opinion it was most likely military, but since I can’t reasonably explain it it has driven me insane thinking about it since. And for the record I’m a huge NASA fanboy and for the most part know when/what’s going on when it comes to space stuff.