After the September 11 attacks , traffic increased significantly to chatrooms on the U.S. Army 's website , goarmy.com , increasing costs of staffing the live chatrooms . As a cost-cutting measure , the SGT STAR project was initiated as a partnership between the United States Army Accessions Command and Next IT , a Spokane , Washington-based company specializing in " intelligent virtual assistants , " using software called ActiveAgent . Testing began in 2003 , and SGT STAR launched to the public in 2006 . " STAR " is an acronym for " strong , trained and ready . " SGT STAR was launched in a chat interface on goarmy.com , but has since been developed as a mobile application , as well as a life-size animated projection that has appeared live at public events . SGT STAR can also interact with users on Facebook
September 11 attacks
September 11 attacks
SGT STAR