ORIGINAL: Tall Paul
I've seen a lot of F-16s and others doing wierd manuvers over EAFB.. with the engine contrail marking the flight path..
The plane will be kinda wings level, slightly nose up, and descending vertically... about like a dethermalized free flight.
The utility of such a manuver escapes me.. as it puts the plane in a zero-airspeed no-manuverability condition, which in a 1V2 would be fatal!...
I was a USAF Air Traffic Controller for ten years, and I worked a lot of F16 traffic during that time. I was stationed at Luke AFB for 6 1/2 years, and more than 200 F16s are stationed there. I even got to fly an F16 for about 20 minutes (Thanks again Col. Spence!) and did a bunch of aerobatics in it. I have never seen an F16 fly in a way that meets the above description, descending "vertically". Your reference to engine con(densation)trails makes me think they are very high when this is going on, which is even more puzzling. If they are indeed descending vertically or nearly so, it might be a training maneuver, perhaps to teach how to recover from that "target" flight condition.