Includes author interviews with Justice Ruth Bader ginsburg on her book, my own words. The heartbeat of wounded knee. Sharon robinson talks about her book, child of the dream. Rick atkinson author of the british are coming and Thomas Malone founding director of the mit center for collective intelligence discusses his book, super mines. The National Book festival Live Saturday august 31 at 10 00 a. M. Eastern on the tv on cspan2. In a short time ago President Trump sent out several tweets about china, the chinese ebony announced in response to u. S. Tariff hikes on chinese goods. China will impose additional tariffs on u. S. Goods worth about 75 billion starting september 1. Resident trump tweening our country has lost stupidly trillions of dollars for china over many years. They have stolen our intellectual property and rate of hundreds of billions of dollars a year and want to continue. I wont let that happen. We dont need china and frankly would be far better off without them. Vast amounts of money made and stolen by china from the United States year after year for decades will and must stop. Our great and American Companies are hereby ordered to him really start looking for an alternative to china, including bringing your companys home and making your products here in the usa. I will be responding to chinas terrorists this afternoon. Its a great opportunity for the United States. Also, im ordering all carriers including fedex, amazon, ups and the post office to search for interviews all deliveries of sentinel from china or anywhere else. Snow kills 100,000 americans a year president xi has said this. But it did not. Our economy because of art gains in the last two and half years is much larger than that of china. We will keep it that way. General james holmes as commander of the air combat command. He talked this morning about training and readiness. Air combat command operates more than 1000 aircraft at 11 bases worldwide. General holmes also answers questions at this event hosted by the air force association in arlington, virginia. [inaudible conversations] good morning. This has to be the best job in the world that somehow i fell into when i look across the room at our air force family its incredible. The chinese would not like what we will talk about it what were doing focused on this nation all of us together. Special thanks for everyone in the room attending and our sponsors and our Defense Industry partners and when we can put them in the same room with our war fighters we go and rapidly is again from requirements to combat capability to the enemy that is good. Also thanks to the media for being here. While get criticized sometimes more than you deserve. We dont tell a story about the most lethal combat force in the world we will miss an opportunity to defend this nation. The media is directly involved here. Good news is this morning we have the leader of the most lethal combat force in the world. Its incredible. We think about whats going on across our convert your forces reported by air combat command around the world we are taking the fight to them 247 and should never, ever forget our officers and personnel who are depending on this nation. Its all about platforms. We are looking forward to hosting everybody in the room at the fiber conference in three weeks. Its focus, just like i think i tried to outline here and strengthening our war fighter into partnership to stay ahead of what might be the most competitive set of enemies with the most advanced technology weve ever asked our airmen to face. Its a challenge. We wont continue to deter enemies and defeat them decisively unless we have a strong fighter and industry partnership. Thank you for being here. Its an honor as the new guys supporting all of you and our air force association and our staff to be with you. General holmes, 38 years plus doing this to fortify era, there was a young man and its a Family Affair. Thank you, sir for being with us. Please join me in welcoming general holmes. [applause] can you hear me okay . Will try the microphone a little different today because im talking to what i think is the home team does not need a lot of explanation about air combat command but we also have the cspan audience with us so i will stand next to the slides so we can do this at the same time. Happy to see everybody. Thank you for the invitation. Good to see old friends and new friends and thanks for taking the time to come out this morning. We did a session with the Defense Writers Group on monday and we are here with you this morning and i believe this morning and go talk to a defense at the Convention Center and happy to do that. We have our expeditionary Senior Leader outbreak today over at the pentagon which is where we bring last years commanders that were deployed into after theyve had a chance to come home and regroup we bring them together to get advice from them and see what we can do to better support folks that are over there now. I have a session with professional staffers this afternoon. Busy day. We tried to fit in as much as weekend when we come to down lets get started. Again, this is the home team but with the audience out there we wear a patch on our shoulder that says peoples first, admission always. Its about our airmen. Our airmen operate and platforms and systems that make us a great air force. We could have a phd dissertation about mission first, people always or people first admission always but her heritage goes back to started by the general in his disciples that if we give our airmen the tools in the right training and if we empower them with disposability and authority for their mission and hold them accountable for they will be effective. First light, please. Go ahead. You know those three on top. There should be a build here that i wont spend much time on except to say uniquely among the services here the air force organized in fourstar command. We have air combat command and air Mobility Command and Space Command for the army has a fleet force command and that means we do business a little differently. Slide please. We start off with this mission statement. I will let you read it. Ive been going back and forth a couple of times our commanders and others but the main thing is that our job is organized to train and equip airmen to be presented through our Service Components all over the world. Our airmen fight on the ground and the air and in cyberspace and electromagnetic spectrum domain. To control the air space and cyberspace its because no matter what happens as we go forward our unified Space Command standing up at the end of the month discussions about having a space force under the department of the air force or separately and there are a lot of terrestrial thoughts and threats that we will have to have a Close Partnership with air combat command. Anti satellite technology. Bullet directed energy launch from the ground, Cyber Attacks launched from the ground or from the air and it will take a Close Partnership among all elements to control the earth, space and ive come to believe we will not control the air and space without exerting some amount of control on the electra minute spectrum which fiber is a component of. Underneath air combat command we have numbered air forces which is the next echelon of command. Our commanderinchief is sitting back here, please raise your hand. Hes waiting at you. Dave came us from the ninth air force and is a clear maintainer with a great ability to connect airmen across our commands and i will do wellin this except to tell you that we have numbered air forces that our Service Component, First Air Force is our component to north, norad and 12 air force is our component to u. S. Outcome and u. S. Airport central and we support and project those capabilities, 24th air force is our component to u. S. Cyber calm and i will come back to that the 25th air force provides Global IntegratedIntelligence Surveillance and reconnaissance to all the cold consul all around the world and so as we look at our structure one of the things were interested in is how do we best prepare our air force and air combat command for the environment of competition, deterrence and if we have to, conflict with pure adversaries. What needs to change in the way we organize train and equip airmen as they move in to the new world. Slide, please. This bill here last step is underneath our numbered air force we have wings and that is the next level down for air force organizational structure and we have wings and some centers but everybody in air combat command can find themselves under this structure somewhere, somehow. Orville talks about the whole family and lieutenant holmes is that Interest Rate defending the National Capital region and in an f16 his big sister, rebecca, is a physicist that works out at the National Laboratory of las palmas and a lot of pro work is for tech here which is one of our organizations under 25 response will for doing the nations monitoring of Nuclear Capabilities and events all over the world. Still a Family Affair for me and my family. Slide, please. Were spread all over the world. Largely in the United States but a lot of the red dots are out here across the middle east and air combat command to the 25th air force provides the bulk of the Intelligence Surveillance and reconnaissance support for all the Service Component commands in the disputed Common Ground systems that are out there around the world and a part of air combat command, whether support all around the world as part of your combat command. Why do we do that connect so we can that in times of search can bring the whole enterprise together to support the co come in contact with the enemy. I visited our dgs in europe this summer and theres a dgs in langley and two in the pacific, one in korea and one in hawaii and one of the deal. All Work Together to provide the intelligence we need around the world. Slide, please. We have three priorities we focus on for the last two and half years. We want to improve the readiness of our units. We have a mandate to do that for our nation as we enter into competition with pure adversaries. To do that we have to focus on ready airmen, ready families and ready weapon systems to put that together. I can tell you we are taking progress and we are faithful for the sustained spending the congress as invested in our readiness issues and put that money to good use over the last year as the money started to come to us in 19. In 18 back about 4000 maintenance positions. One year and half ago i wouldve told you we were short about a thousand maintainers in your combat command now i can tell you were not short maintainers. We are training young maintainers to be experienced maintainers but we have not come close because we laid the groundwork with additional money in the budget in 19 rolled in we are able to start applying that through your first ultra command to play in the parts and the sustainment and to lay in the extra double intervals that those miracle workers do to keep our aging fleet ready and as a result of that we gained about 15 readiness across our combat air force if you go back and look at history in about 1978 when we came out of another carrier that extended high use of our equipment which drove Lower Readiness in the general sitting in my chair a Tactical Air Command were able to gain about 12 a year for five or six years to get back to the readiness that we want to get to. We made a good start. For the guys that were my commanders and mentors in that time. The room we are going at it pretty much the same way you went at it and getting a result the lineup with the method you taught us. The power our folks and give them authority and response ability for the mission and hold them accountable for it and put them in competition with each other and off they go. Building leaders to prevail and join or fight is our part of the chiefs joint idea and we are training leaders at down at the shop and like manner level and superintendent level and we are running a squadron course that is part of our focus and we now run out Squadron Commander through this course and doing focused deeper education on generating the way we Work Together to apply more and train more. I think we are making progress there. Excepting risk we rely on air force workers in the Lifecycle Management center that keep a fleet that averages 30 years o old, functional and capable and strikes fear into the hearts of the people we line up against. We rely on the acquisition system that is government industry paired together to be able to be equip us in what we need to do is go faster ultimately. I dont have concerns about our systems except we all have got to learn to go faster in a world where our adversaries are going fast. We see the line 20 out there by capability and focus on the five years or our part is how we work Operational Testing that were responsible for with development of testing that air force Material Command does see how we can overlap those immigrants go faster. I can report to you were making progress there and the air force test center are working with the Worker Center working on proposals to take that to the next step. To get things done faster and better. Slide, please. Theres a reason why back in 2008 i was involved and several decisions are made as a nation we decided to cancel the f22 program there in 20082009. The logic we used to do that was our adversaries would not be able feel the systems. They were competitive with the things we feel the now and into the 2030s and, you know, we were wrong. Our adversaries are feeling systems already that pose your level threat into the field and so we will have to go faster. Not just in the platforms but as the chief said focus on the highways that we drive our trucks on how to be connect and learn and how to get ready for the future that rely increasingly on good capabilities warfare on the electromagnetic spectrum. Slide, please. I showed you that picture of air combat command. Why did i do that . If we go forward because i believe those changes and ill talk about them. It would be out there on the left so again thats First Air Force, norad and 12th air force we have to do two things. Without them to be a Service Component to self calm and also be the organize training and equip parent headquarters about half of our conventional forces. We are working to see if we can put all those conventional forces under one of our numbered air force is and freeze the 12th of two look at central america. Our National Defense strategy asks us to concentrate on peer thats first, russia and china and rogue states with iran and north korea and violent extremists. Frankly, although things are in central and south america. Russia is in central and south america and china and i ron is certainly in central and south america. We want u. S. Outcome throughout your component to focus more on that role and proposing not a done deal in the air force but proposing to align our conventional fighters rescuing command control forces under the ninth air force. Its also the home to a Standing JointTask Force Headquarters capability that we felt so that we can take on it they want us to the air force can provide a headquarters to go run a task in support like the army is able to provide headquarters or core headquarters. We are building the capability at the ninth air force and theyve reached an initial operation capability and it will lead and exercise this fall and the spring with u. S. European command that is the next step in reaching a full operational capability. So, that will be responsible for both force generation and presentation. Conventional forces and driving in the work with joint commanders to get the readiness required. Under the iw forces this fall we will combine 24th and 25th air force so 24th has been our air force fiber and 25th is our Global Integrated isr, numbered air force with those two things together this fall with nomination packets going to the process and they dont know when that he will be depending on the admission process but will put those together. That new numbered air force i have a slide that talks about it. We continue to maintain our advanced training tactics and test function at the air force Worker Center. Slide, please. So, walking back to those conventional forces and bringing them together why do you want to do that . If we can line them up under a single commander can take advantage of a strike going being a wonder command working together to achieve their readiness goals. Rescue moody and will pull the sink together under one commander and optimize their training and support and help them Work Together to be a Single Service force provider in his capabilities where someone cant go substitute in someone can and will be able to advocate for al