They can also be flying with extra munitions under the wings. At which point they stop being stealthy.

Also stealth aircraft are notoriously difficult and sensitive on maintenance. So might be a case of stealth degrading after a few weeks of intense operation.

And the theory I see floating around on forums is that it was a QAEM-118 missile. Since it has IR and optical guidance that could ignore sheath at shorter ranges/low speed. And some US missions might be flying at low altitude to make use of terrain masking.