I think what you're hearing is "...
and flight," but I agree it's superfluous.
Or when you're doing a large strike package -- "Alpha strike" in the Navy, or a "gorilla" in the USAF. I remember one time doing an Alpha strike from the Kitty Hawk off the California coast against the Salton Sea range in SoCal. We were on UHF, so we only heard one side of the conversation, but it was interesting listening to the ATC transmissions to a stream of airliners inbound to LAX:
"American 123, roger, ident, maintain flight level 240. Your traffic is a flight of 43 Navy aircraft, 12 o'clock, 20 miles, at flight level 170 block 230, lower when you're past them."
"Roger, 123, that's 43 Navy aircraft, 170 block 230."
"No, sir, I don't know what they're doing, but there's a bunch of them."
And yes, we were on an ALTRV.
Biggest one I was ever in was 96 F-111's (48 each from Upper Heyford and Lakenheath) simulating a major Soviet raid on the UK as part of a big UK air defense exercise (including RAF, RN, and USAF air defense assets). We gaggled up over the North Sea halfway to Denmark, turned west, then split up and hit them in 1's and 2's everywhere from Dover to John O'Groats. Probably a good recreation of the Luftwaffe raids during the Battle of Britain. Big job for their equivalent of NORAD to sort it all out and allocate their interceptor assets -- just like in 1940, but with better equipment, although a lot faster speeds.