San Francisco transformed into mock battlezone under Air Force’s ‘Exercise Sourdough’
The U.S. Air Force hit the streets of San Francisco for a military training mission in which the airmen were told to evade enemy capture while being hunted by military forces. 60th Air Mobility Wing
For three days, San Francisco became a simulated battlefield as part of the Department of War’s largest urban evasion training exercise.
More than 150 participants, including members of the US Air Force, faced off against a mix of military and civilian law enforcement agencies acting as “enemy forces” to sharpen the airmen’s skills for surviving behind enemy lines. The operation, called Exercise Sourdough, ran from December 8 to 11.
During the 72-hour drill, 40 airmen in 11 teams moved covertly through the city with limited resources while being pursued by opposition forces. The “enemy” included members of the San Francisco Sheriff’s Office, the US Coast Guard, SWAT units from several agencies, and other military squads.
Lt. Col. Mary Lea Bordelon, the squadron commander, explained to Task & Purpose that the exercise is designed to improve airmen’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) skills in a high-stress urban environment. The training simulates situations in which soldiers must avoid capture in a foreign city until American forces can plan their extraction.
The airmen received instructions similar to real-life operational communications. “For example: go to this location; there will be a black vehicle in this spot with maybe this license plate; approach the vehicle; you will get one flash of headlights; approach from the rear; open the trunk; take out your overnight bag and depart, and don’t talk to anybody,” Bordelon said.
If airmen were caught, they were taken to the sheriff’s office for interrogation. “I think five of the 11 teams were caught. It gives realism for our folks, and also for the sheriff’s office because they want to catch every single team — and they did not,” Bordelon said.
At the end of the exercise, all teams were extracted by helicopters and boats provided by multiple California agencies and transported to Moffett Federal Airfield. From there, they boarded a C-5M Super Galaxy and returned to Travis Air Force Base.
Master Sgt. Jeremy Campbell emphasized the significance of the operation: “The training value cannot be understated because there are few frameworks of this magnitude within the Department of War.”
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