Weird lights in MN

So, I have seen these lights before. Always at night, always during spring, summer, and fall months. We've all seen satalites flying across the sky. We've all seen meteors flashing, sometimes with visible trails. Well, these are kinda a combination of the two.

Every once in a while, I'll be outside at night on my patio, looking up at the sky. I'll see an extremely bright, stationary flash (about 20 times brighter then Venus). It doesn't light up the ground, but it's more like someone turned on an LED flashlight in a direct line of sight to you. It then illuminates a short, straight trail. The flash is only for a second, but hard to miss. Then, a light appears just at the end of the trail, much dimmer then the flash. It travels on a straight course in line with the trail. The brightness of the light varies, getting somewhat bright (nowhere near as bright as the initial flash), and also dimming to the point that you can't see it, then re-appearing again. It fluctuates. No apparent patturn to it at all. But you can follow it to the horizon.

As I said, I have seen this a few times. I have seen satalites, I've seen meteors. I don't know what these lights are, but I do not think these are either satalites or meteors.

2 reasons I ask
1. they test stuff
2. UFOs often hang out near military bases because they test stuff.

There is a small Air National Guard base at the MSP Airport with a few C-130's that is about 25 miles south of here. They're an "Air Lift Wing." Then there are the scattered military Reserve / National Guard armories that are all over every state in every small town. There really isn't any "full time / active duty" military instalations in MN. These lights always appear to the north of my location (20 miles north of Minneapolis) and seem to head east / southeast.