Gen. Mike Holmes, commander of Air Combat Command, announced a new information warfare numbered air force that will combine the 24th and 25th air forces, the service branch reported Wednesday.

The command announced in April its plans to merge the two air forces in order to integrate electronic warfare, cyber, information operations and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance activities at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland in Texas.

“The activation of 16th (Air Force) will synchronize the mission areas of ISR, electronic warfare, cyber and information operations capabilities,” Holmes said Wednesday at the Air Force Association’s Air, Space and Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Md. “This integrated capability will provide multi-domain options to component and combatant commanders around the globe.”

Defense Secretary and a 2019 Wash 100 winner Mark Esper announced Wednesday that President Donald Trump has nominated Air Force Maj. Gen. Timothy Haugh to serve as commander of the 16th air force and for promotion to the rank of lieutenant general.

Haugh is the current head of the 25th air force. He previously served as commander of the Cyber National Mission Force and director of intelligence at U.S. Cyber Command.

The Government Accountability Office has assessed the scheduling of NASA’s efforts to manage major human space exploration systems. GAO said Wednesday that it’s looking into the space agency’s development activities of the Orion spacecraft, the Space Launch System rocket and Exploration Ground Systems.

Orion and SLS will serve as vehicles for lunar and Martian exploration missions, and EGS will facilitate the processing and launching of spacecraft and rockets. The federal watchdog found that NASA has made progress since GAO’s last report in June. The earlier audit identified significant occurrences of schedule delays, with setbacks that may push the systems’ launch date to June 2021 despite the schedule’s revision to June 2020.

GAO also discovered an understatement of over $750M in the SLS program’s cost growth calculations. NASA has so far addressed seven of 18 recommendations that GAO has issued over eight previous reports. The accountability office urges NASA to take up more action and comply with the remaining recommendations.

Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Jack Reed, D-RI, have introduced a bill directing the establishment of a Malign Foreign Influence Response Center responsible for preventing adversarial interference and threats ahead of the federal elections.

Klobuchar’s office said Wednesday that the Combatting Foreign Influence Act would mandate the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to create the center, and coordinate information sharing and analysis activities across government agencies as well as the intelligence community.

The center will focus on mitigating threats from known adversaries such as Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. In addition, the unit will launch disinformation campaigns and submit an annual report to Congress detailing its activities and impact on privacy matters.

“We know that foreign governments and their agents have executed extensive and sophisticated influence campaigns that are designed to sow division, spread disinformation, and mislead the American people—we need a collaborative, comprehensive approach to protecting our democracy from information warfare,” said Klobuchar.

Congress may opt to re-authorize the center after eight years.

Christopher Krebs, director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and a 2019 Wash100 Award winner, said government and industry cyber professionals seeking to encourage more people to participate in efforts to counter digital threats should present such threats in a more realistic way, Nextgov reported Wednesday.

“One of the things we’ve got to do a better job of is [to] stop selling fear,” Krebs said in his keynote speech at CISA Cybersecurity Summit. “Fear sells, but we have far too much to offer to just be looking for the next mark. We’ve got to be more straightforward, more measured, more reasonable in how we talk about [threats].”

He also cited how outreach programs could help agencies and industry address the cyber workforce shortage.