The Air Force Academy (USAFA) has introduced new majors like computing and network security and nuclear weapons and strategy to ensure that every graduate has an experience within aerospace and cyberspace.
USAFA Superintendent Lt. Gen. Michelle Johnson said Friday that the Academy is looking to make the core curriculum more interdisciplinary than multidisciplinary to link together expertise and skill sets. Johnson said, for example, if the Air Force launches satellites, it wants management majors to think about management, or if the service looks at cyber, it wants law and political science majors involved to analyze the consequences of such technology.
“All of our cadets are learning more about cyber as a connected tissue for our Air Force and our nation,” Johnson told an audience during a presentation at the National Press Club in Washington, adding that many USAFA candidates express interest in cyber as a career path.
Johnson said the Air Force is working to develop and fund a new cyber innovation center based on a “highly successful” center of innovation the service already runs with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The DHS Science and Technology Directorate-funded Center of Innovation at USAFA was established in 2008 and has become the “sandbox” for government agencies, private industry and academia to perform collaborative research, share expertise and shape technologies. Johnson said the Air Force would like this new center to work with public-private funding and also partner with industry.
Cadets, Johnson said, are also performing hands-on space projects. The Cadet-developed Falconsat 5 launched on Orbital ATK’s [OA] Minotaur IV in 2010 and Academy spokesman John Van Winkle said Friday Falconsat 6 and Falconsat 7 are scheduled to launch in May 2016 on a Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) launch vehicle. Van Winkle said Falconsat 7 will feature a single payload pinhole camera.
Van Winkle said Falconsat 8 is on the drawing board but will start in earnest in August. Its mission is undecided, he said. About 30 cadets, all seniors, work on a satellite program. VanWinkle said the Academy is the only school in the nation with only undergrads working on satellites.