The U.S. Air Force Academy dedicated the Madera Cyber Innovation Center in April 2025. It is now fully opera­tional, serving as headquarters for the Department of Computer and Cyber Sciences and Air Force CyberWorx.

Checkpoints recently talked with two members of the cadet cyber warfare team to hear how the new facility has impacted their work as a competitive academic team and cadet club. The team, supported by the Class of 1968, won the National Security Agency Cybersecurity Exercise in 2025, notching its fourth win in six years.

TRAINING OF NEW CLUB MEMBERS

“When we start every year, we take people who have no experience in cyber, people who have some or a lot of experience in cyber, and we teach them from the very basics of how to use a Linux terminal, how to run basic commands, how to use exploitation tools like Cali, which is an operating system for exploitation, or Nmap to scan networks. We teach them the foundations, and we grow them to where they need to be to be a successful cyber operator on our team.”

FAVORITE PART OF THE CYBER WARFARE TEAM, AKA DELOGRANDE

 “My favorite part of being on Delogrande is probably teaching. When I teach, it also involves teaching myself, so I have to prepare myself, and I have to know the important concepts before I can confidently teach other people what they need to know. It's a really great feeling when you spend hours and hours on one problem, this one target that you're trying to break into…. And once you actually get in there and break into whatever machine you're hacking into, it's a feeling like no other. It's a great feeling to just sit down and really work at a problem for hours and finally get it.”

HOW THE MADERA CENTER HAS CHANGED THE TEAM

“Before, we were in Fairchild Hall. We were kind of just in a regular classroom. We didn't really have access to many cyber resources. Now that we're here at the Madera Cyber Innovation Center, we're in this incredible ecosystem that's all focused on cyber. So we have cyber classes going on here. We have Air Force Cyber- Worx doing all their contracting work, which is really amazing. We have a new Cyber City on the second floor, which is really cool. Everything we need is better here, because it's specialized, and it's made for cyber and for learning cyber.”

MAKING CONNECTIONS AROUND THE WORLD

“The cyber team has a relationship with [Thailand’s] NKRAFA [Navaminda Kasatriyadhiraj Royal Air Force Academy], . . . and we're trying to foster it and take it to the next level by actually visiting them, which happened this year. We were able to conduct a joint cyber training with them. It was five of us USAFA cadets with 11 NKRAFA cadets, and we competed on teams with [them]. We learned from them, and we taught them some skills, and we also met high-ranking officials within the academy itself.”

HOW THE CLASS OF 1968 HAS IMPACTED THE TEAM

“The Class of 1968 has been a very impactful part of our team. Without them, we wouldn't have access to travel to as many competitions as we do. Already, this month [October], we're traveling to eight competitions which wouldn't be possible without their generous donations and funding. As a team, we're really grateful to all the support that they give us with their funding.”

HOW THE MADERA CENTER HAS CHANGED THE TEAM

“Madera has really been a game changer for the cyber team. Back in Fairchild, we didn't have good network infrastructure. We were getting bad internet connections. We were getting lag. And in Madera, we have far newer technology, stuff that is made within the past year compared to within the past 10 years, and that's really been a game changer for our team. We don't have to worry about configuring old level hardware to support our team. We can focus on actually hacking itself.”