Low-flying helicopter passes will continue over SF for the next few days as nuclear safety surveys are conducted before Sunday’s big football game.
San Francisco has a long history of nuclear warfare and radiation. Of the 300 designated host sites for nuclear missiles developed by the United States during the Cold War, twelve of them are in the San Francisco Bay Area. (Most, like the Nike Missile Site in Marin, are decommissioned and remain open for tours.) The San Francisco neighborhoods of Bayview-Hunters Point and Treasure Island are infamous for their radioactive pollutants; the former location made international headlines in late 2024 after elevated levels of radioactive materials were discovered by the U.S. Navy — an observation found ahead of housing development at Hunters Point Shipyards.
While there’s no active nuclear threat in San Francisco (thankfully), a rare “nuke-sniffing” helicopter was spotted swirling over the city yesterday afternoon ahead of the 60th Super Bowl this weekend, as is now regular protocol for the NFL’s biggest game.
Called ENRGY14, the large helicopter is operated by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to detect and map radiation in areas deemed high-risk or at-risk of nuclear activity or attack. Many aviation-dedicated accounts on social media noticed ENRGY14 swept through much of San Francisco’s Crissy Field and acreage along the Embarcadero, two places where the U.S. military operated an airfield up until 1974; subsequent years have revealed that the area was also a dumping ground for hazardous waste, some of which was radioactive.
Just a single unit of an aircraft fleet that makes up the NNSA’s aerial Nuclear Emergency Support Team, it’s unclear if other helicopters will also help survey San Francisco before these low-flight sweeps cease on Wednesday.
NNSA activity head of Super Bowls is by no means an anomaly. “Nuke-sniffing” motorcars, planes, and helicopters have been used to survey host cities for every Super Bowl over the past decade and are also frequently used ahead of other high-profile, massively attended events like presidential inaugurations.
