USAGov, the U.S. federal government’s official web service, launched an artificial chatbot to address scam cases online. The Sam chatbot is built on data regarding individuals who encountered scams.   

The General Services Administration deployed a team to begin 32 discussions about scams in two workshops, wrote Marietta Jelks, consumer action handbook program manager for the department, in a blog posted Wednesday.

The team learned from the conversations that users are mostly concerned with information about where to report scams, identifying scams and recovering from associated financial damage. Sam’s development builds on idea maps, illustrations and flow charts based on gathered input.

GSA intends for future versions of Sam to feature bilingual capability, topics in Spanish, free text response, user satisfaction surveys and contact center integration.  

The U.S. Marine Corps Systems Command partnered with U.S. Fleet Marine Forces and other organizations to assess the performance of additive printed impellers on M1A1 Abrams tanks. The service branch said Thursday it plans to utilize the impellers to replace tank components in the event of delayed parts deliveries.

The command teamed up with Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory to validate and create a 100-page technical data package for the impellers.

“We plan to continue to collect operational hours on three 3D-printed impellers to better assess the long-term reliability of the part,” said Joseph Burns, technical lead for the command’s advanced manufacturing operations cell.

The Marine Corps will test, evaluate and certify the impellers after completing the technical data package. The impellers work to maintain the clean state of tank filters through the removal of dust from the engines.

The Nuclear Weapons Council authorized development for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) effort to extend the W80-4 warhead’s service life.

NNSA, a unit of the Department of Energy, will work with the Department of Defense to develop and determine the final sustained design for the warhead via testing and analyses, the department said Thursday. The U.S. Air Force intends to use the warhead as a long range standoff cruise missile equipped on B-52 and B-21 aircraft.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory heads the design activities under the program, and Sandia National Laboratories manages the non-nuclear aspects of development. Los Alamos National Laboratory and Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center are among other contributors.

Heather Wilson, secretary of the Air Force and a Wash100 winner, said the service plans to resume previous “vanguard” programs to speed up prototyping, testing and deployment of next-generation technologies, Inside Defense reported Thursday.

The service intends to use a different way of identifying and fielding new technologies to maintain air dominance. 

“Rather than looking at a particular platform, our next-generation air dominance will identify the technologies that we need to develop and test and then make decisions along the way on how we will deploy those technologies,” Wilson said during a hearing with the Senate Armed Services Committee. 

Wilson admitted that problems still remain in the Air Force’s major defense programs, which involve multiple processes to bring new capabilities to service members. The Air Force Systems Command created “vanguard” in the 1970s to provide a technology management approach that determines systems, costs, schedules and plans needed for acquisition and research.

NASA completed tests for engine systems designed to support the deployment of the initial four Space Launch System rockets to space. Sixteen RS-25 engines underwent hot fire demonstrations have accumulated 14,700 seconds through 32 developmental tests since 2015, the agency said Friday. 

The engines were initially developed to reach a performance rate of 100 percent and updated to operate up to 104.5 percent by using an engine controller designed to establish communications between the RS-25 units and the spacecraft. Testing efforts for the engines began in 2015 with a 500-second hot fire demo, followed by the initial SLS flight engine test in 2016.

Aerojet Rocketdyne has also started the construction of additional RS-25 engines for the agency.

Air Combat Command will combine this summer its 24th and 25th air forces to integrate cyber, electronic warfare, information operations and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance activities at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland in Texas, the Air Force reported Thursday.

“The merger of 24th and 25th is the next step in leveraging and integrating new ideas and technologies to both improve the quality and speed of decision-making and deliver improved effects for commanders,” said Gen. Mike Holmes, commander of Air Combat Command. “This formalizes the existing collaborations between cyber and ISR while expanding our competitive space in EW and IO, also improving readiness and increasing lethality across the range of military operations – all vital to the success of multi-domain warfighting in the 21st century,” Holmes added.

The integration seeks to provide more options for combatant commanders, support National Defense Strategy priorities and deliver the first information warfare numbered air forces to establish the service branch’s ability to provide electromagnetic spectrum capabilities.

Christopher Krebs, director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and 2019 Wash100 Award winner, said DHS plans to unveil a new personnel system in late 2019 to provide agency officials “capabilities to hire people based on their skill sets, not what’s on a piece of paper,” Nextgov reported Thursday.

“I need a different set of hiring authorities and that’s part of what we’re doing,” Krebs said Thursday during the Forcepoint Cybersecurity Leadership Forum. Krebs said the proposed Cyber Talent Management System would help the department recruit cyber professionals on a continuous basis.

DHS expects the new system to accelerate the hiring process for cyber employees and employ at least 150 cyber professionals by the end of fiscal year 2020, according to the department’s budget request obtained by the publication.

The Wash100 award, now in its sixth year, recognizes the most influential executives in the GovCon industry as selected by the Executive Mosaic team in tandem with online nominations from the GovCon community. Representing the best of the private and public sector, the winners demonstrate superior leadership, innovation, reliability, achievement and vision.

Visit the Wash100 site to learn about the other 99 winners of the 2019 Wash100 Award. On the site, you can submit your 10 votes for the GovCon executives of consequence that you believe will have the most significant impact in 2019.