Inspiring the next generation at the Royal International Air Tattoo 14-16 July

It was great to be back at RIAT at RAF Fairford this year, and we welcomed thousands of visitors to our stand in the Techno Zone over the three days. HRH The Duke of Gloucester, and Sir Michael Fallon the Secretary of State for Defence, stopped by to meet the GCHQ team and take a look at our interactive games. 

Our games were as popular as ever, with queues of people eager to test their maths and memory skills on our 'Vault' and  'Commander' games. Our new 'Crypto Cluster' game designed by this year's industrial placement students proved to be a big hit with the visitors too.

For the first time, we had a stand on the Innovation Trail where around 5000 school children visited nine stands throughout the day to answer a question and collect a stamp about the technology on display to earn their 'wings'. At the GCHQ stand they had to decrypt the name of the famous code-breaker who worked at Bletchley Park during WWII using the shift cipher on our Cryptoy app. 

It was great to be part of this brilliant air show, promote STEM subjects, and talk to young people about career opportunities.