Texas A&M University has become the first university to collaborate with the United States Air Force in a Blue Edge exercise.
The Blue Edge Program is usually a 10-week internship, or hacking boot camp, for ROTC and other government agencies. The internship concludes with a large-scale competition in which participants attempt to hack each other’s drones.
A modified version of this competition took place on campus at Texas A&M on Feb. 18. Two student teams, which included members of the Corps of Cadets and the Texas A&M Cybersecurity Club, participated in the event. The previous weekend, participants were briefed on the drone defense programs that they would be hacking.
Hunter Heaton, a former Air Force ROTC cadet from Texas A&M, is helping to extend this program to universities around the country to generate interest for these kinds of activities.