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Flying wingtip to wingtip is a typical attack/intercept formation. It may have been training, or they may have been scrambled in response to an unidentified aircraft. I've seen what military pilots are capable of, and I would feel safer knowing they're there to deal with anything.
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Bingo. Generally when they take off like that it's a scramble maneuver. (short story)
Long Story: Aircraft generally only take off into the wind. This is why any decent size airport has about 7-12 runways, most pointing in different directions. So multiple aircraft have to take off of really 1 runway in as short a time as possible. Wingtip to Wingtip lowers the interference as opposed to infront-behind. So they double-up to avoid the jetwash of the aircraft infront of them. Military aircraft practice this ALL the time, much like firefighters they need to have 0 time wasted when the call is made.
It is also used when pretending to be a larger aircraft on radar. The Israelis used a similar maneuver to mask 5 F-16s to bomb the Iraqi Nuclear site in the '80s. By flying so close together it looks like one large plane instead of multiple smaller ones.