In Feb of '83 while stationed at The National Training Center, Ft Irwin Ca. myself and Sfc Grissett were driving into Barstow from base. Shortly after leaving the reservation we were West of and just North of the Coyote Dry Lake bed. I observed a strung out,lazy S formation of seven yellowish/amber orbs along the Northwestern edge of the lakebed,runing in an Easterly direction which was off to my left. Pulling off the right hand side of the road,we both exited the vehicle and started talking to each other about what we were looking at. We were both part of the NTCs Alpha Company Operations Group,"Observer Controllers" in that we were used as trainers for the units that rotated thru the NTC,and were expected to be able to acurately report,in detail,actions of the soldiers we observed. As we watched these objects,we went down a mental checklist of "Who,what,where,when,and what are we doing" standard "Spot Report" proceedures,and a lot of things were unanswerable,such as,if they were producing light as we were seeing,how high were these orbs,as we could not determine any groundlit area under them.The orbs bobbed in position,floating up and down slightly,and seperating in distance between each other only slightly, and the soft curves in the lazy S formation changed little.We both cussed the fact that our binoculars were in the barracks,as we were hard pressed to determine the distance to them,we believed it to be no more than 1/2 mile,as well as we could determine from the terrain along the lakebed that we could see,and were highly frustrated as we couldn't identify WHAT we were seeing.These orbs "floated & bobbed" in this position,with no seemingly purpose or direction until the orb in the most Easterly direction moved away from the rest about 2-3 orb widths,and faster than I can describe,headed down from the group,towards the ground,and at the same time began to shrink in size until it winked out,at the same time it winked out, the remaining six blinked out completely,gone,zip. Sfc Grissett said "Lad,I think we'ed best be off now." When we returned later that night, I called range control at Bycicle Lake Air Field and questioned about any traffic at Coyote Lake, as that was off the military resevation. When asked about what I had seen,the NCO on duty said,"Oh,them, they won't hurt 'cha unless you try and chase 'em and in the dark,lotsa luck" When I pushed him about the lights, he told me they were flares, Hogwash I said. He then asked me if I was military, and when I said I was an SFC with Ops Grp, he said "Sarge,they are flares and dats the name of that tune". I was stationed there from '82 until '85 and observed the same orbs in several different locations, in several diferent fromations,and when reported received the same reply "Sarge,leave it alone,they are flares".I spent over 24 years in combat arms and during Tank gunnery, was exposed to hundreds of "Flares" during night fireing, these were NOT flares.