find ways to reduce incidence of a sexual assault and better health victims when they return after the break, they will talk about conviction and acquittal rates among the military branches. and how the military justice system handles cases. week nights were featuring book tv programs showcasing what is available every weekend on c-span too. tonight is "after words", 60 minutes correspondent discusses major news events he's covered as a reporter the examine the rise in violence committed by young men around the world and the detail time in the marine corps and her efforts to overturn the ban on women in combat. all that starts tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern. enjoy booktv this week and every weekend on c-span2. >> watch a book tv for live coverage of the national book festival. saturday august 31 starting at 10:00 a.m. eastern our coverage

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 c-span2. >> 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 won't let that happen. we don't 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 company's home and making your products here in the usa. i will be responding to china's terrorists this afternoon. it's a great opportunity for the united states. also, i'm 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 -- it's 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 don't 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. it's incredible. we think about what's 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. it's 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 we've ever asked our airmen to face. it's a challenge. we won't continue to deter enemies and defeat them decisively unless we have a strong fighter and industry partnership. thank you for being here. it's 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 it's 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 i'm 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 c-span 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 year's commanders that were deployed into after they've 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 let's 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. it's 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 won't spend much time on except to say uniquely among the services here the air force organized in four-star 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. i've 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 it's 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 i've 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 commander-in-chief is sitting back here, please raise your hand. he's 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 integrated intelligence 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 f-16 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 there's 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 would've 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 don't 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. there's a reason why back in 2008 i was involved and several decisions are made as a nation we decided to cancel the f-22 program there in 2008-2009. 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 i'll talk about them. it would be out there on the left so again that's 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 that's 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. it's also the home to a standing joint task 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 they've 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 don't 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 can't go substitute in someone can and will be able to advocate for all those forces and have one standard and one ig. slide, please. for information warfare this is a big job but it's important we

bring these capabilities together. this new numbered air force commander will be air force fiber and be our service component to u.s. cyber command and have our cyber mission teams that work in that role. they will also command a joint force headquarters cyber air force which is focused on you calm, trains, and extract, and there are different headquarters led by the services focused on different parts of that cocom challenge. air force net ops commander. he will also run all the networks that the air force provides both at unclassified, secret and higher classification levels. it will be our service component commander working the support and airmen we provide to the national security agency and other things we do across the intelligence community. we will pull all that together supporting both u.s. cyber calm and air force cyber roles and

look at the low global comes and we pull those things together and our belief is that will make this more effective across information spectrum. frankly, were still working about how to define that. we work definitions across the joint world. information warfare is this larger issue of how to be take all the data that is out there and available to us and use tools to make that data work on behalf of war fighters. information operations to meet is a little bit more tailored of taking precise intelligence information, crafting a message that will have the right impact, finding the right audience to deliver it to having the means to deliver it to them and drive the effect the 24th air force already has game in that area and we think pulling the greater intelligence resources together with them will give them even more game in the world we are moving into.

it's our challenge against pure adversaries that we are in competition and would like to stay in competition. we are in a competition with pure adversaries that is a military component that largely states below the level of armed conflict and would like to keep it there. we want to recap that competition on terms that are favorable for us. part of that is offering options to our national decision-makers that they can use in competition that are not the surly aeschylus tory but are on the right level with thanks that our adversaries are doing so we can deter malign activities at all levels from the information warfare level all the way up to major conflict. our goal here is to provide you options and more coherent options to our national decision-makers. we will start off with a consolidated component with an integrated staff and single operation center that ties those

things together. we can do that at ioc this fall. we will continue to stretch and build on that information worker information ops capability that we provide through service and cyber components. we will be able to still have one commander overall with cyber mission force teams and we will move to 557 weather and it's been under the 12th air force but when you think about what our weather wing does it take information, gathers by sensors all across the world and use algorithms for people to work through and provides it through network that fits in with our isr and cyber missions and we think it will have a better home there. we are looking at what should follow in our organizational structure. we also expect it to take a lead role in revitalizing the planning, capability and to dominate the electromagnetic spectrum. with your help we continue to field outstanding systems that operate in the electromagnetic

spectrum but in 15 years of combat focused on violent extremism at the lowest tactical levels we lost our operational and strategic planning capability to bring those things together to achieve operational and strategic effect we think we need to rebuild that. we also know that to be successful as we go forward with the systems we've built that rely on computer power and rely on identifying the enemies of sophisticated press and spectrum and to counter them we want to reprogram faster and so we will take steps to look at the enterprise we use to do that but how do we take information on the specific specifications of an enemy system operating under electromagnetic domain? getting back to our reprogram and in mission where to our systems to counter that threat in near real-time. our goal is to do that within [inaudible] cycle.

it's our starting gap it to do that faster. with this established together we've looked at the different information warfare training programs that we have across 25th air force and in in intelligence and cyber and informational warfare and there's the option we might all those together under one wing commander to do that better and faster. slide, please. airmen, highways the next works that connect them together and i know i'm in a room that build highways and platform so we need to come to this and this may be what you want to talk about but these are some of the things that tend to make that vision happened that we are working on. i will always start with the ones on the top there. advanced battle management systems. it's based on having multi- domain information, gathering tools to gather information across multiple domains and it's

the bedrock of what we are doing. the ability to command and control that anyways to take that data and make sense of it and get it back out in the agile medications required to share that data in a contested environment. those two things will be fundamental to everything we do. multi- domain awareness, advanced battle management and agile medications to link those together but beyond that, we are working through transition with headquarters air force and how we plan and design for the future. headquarters air force is taking on a more central role in guiding that we do the work to help them and for continuing to work through the modernization of her air operation center through a new ops protocol to do that faster we have moved or in the process of moving to an open architecture and distributed common ground system structure and intel so we can make changes in real time and we own that oms and look forward to it.

talk about multi- domain community control. this fall we will do a joint experiment under the blessings of the vice chairman to go think about what is joint all domains command and control look like and we will be building the capability to experiment with that and what you may know -- known what we call it the shadow operation center and will be working to see how we can work with the other services to pull this together. our young folks exercise and they talk about the future and no matter which service or uniform they where they come back and say boss, we need to figure out how to do purple [inaudible] to get the effects we want and the time we want across service boundaries we will have to pull a command and control together to keep up with the enemy. we talked about dt and ot and to be ready for the advanced threat we will have to make improvements in our operational training infrastructure and that means both live ranges that we train on an increasingly the

virtual ranges where we can do things we don't want people to watch us do so we can go get rap after representative in a more cost-effective way. thinking about peer adversaries means we need to rethink our homeland defense and working with north, on an analysis of alternatives to think about what should our coverage b for the northern approaches that offend the central threat surface that we resented two enemies but we will have to think about that broader across the two giant oceans and friendly neighbors north and south to give us the unique geographic position and how we should do that and get our awareness for homeland defense and how will be command and control it when you have to reach out pretty far how we work with partners that are set out there astride those approaches and pass we make sure we have awareness of what's happening out there and then how do we provide the terminal defense required to deter with the

united states. we continue, i think, to uniquely lead the department of defense and the integration of our reserve and international guard forces with active-duty forces and find ways to improve that across multiple domains we are responsible for. of international guard wings right now that have a group that flies our pas and a group that is cyber in a group that does isr pgs, all under one wing. we continue to take advantage of the talent that america has in a part-time or full-time role to bring them to bear on our problems. i talked about spectrum dominance wing and dynamic force employment is the joint staff approach to how do we make the most effective use out of the forces behalf to be a little less predictable and to operate around the world facing global problems.

we divulged to review their problems should be handled within a region under a cocom and think about peer adversaries that operate all the way around the world we have to integrate that around the world and dynamic force employment is a way to make use of all the forces across our joint force and use them in an unpredictable manner without leaving them out so long that were not able to train into the things to regain our readiness. slide, please. why do we do this? what are we doing? this is a picture in 2003 of the second invasion of iraq. this is a team of soldiers on the march toward baghdad been on the road for a couple of days and pretty worn out and the time to stop and take a rest. you tell by the way they've laid their equipment was that they are worried about. they put their vehicles in a circle to protect them from small arms fire and doug shallow sleeping positions to protect them from shrapnel from orders if they are attacked by a ground

force and not worried about air where their vehicles would be debated and be arrayed in a different fashion. they know overhead is a satellite constellation operating by the air force in the nro that will watch their flanks. they note that in rpa above watching closer for anybody and if they get in trouble the entire weight of u.s. air force would be brought to bear to look after them. this is what we want it to look like. slide, please. you know, again, for my mentors and bosses of the crowd this is the first invasion of pushing iraq out of kuwait and this is what happens to a nation whose ground forces aren't protected and they don't control the air force and we want to make sure this never happens to an american or ally ground force. that's our sacred duty. air combat command is why we work with you to do the things we do to ensure we have the

capabilities as we go forward. slide, please. thank you for giving me a minute to talk you through where we are and where we are going. i'd be happy to take questions. >> [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] >> pat from james. on tuesday he said you are looking at the longer-term options for addressing the low observability maintenance facilities for the after two.

i was wondering if you could expand upon that. what do you consider or what is wrong with them right now? are you considering moving them for further deployed locations? >> pat from james. >> we talked about the hurricane has on that after the twos. our response was we relocated the flying training units and they are back for the students who fly the f-22. operational spotter in the 95th and we disperse their airplanes and are able to take the operational f-22 squadrons and give them 224 assigned aircraft which we think is the right number to train at the time but we need to to produce a mission ready pilots. we saw good results from that. one of the factors that would take us longer to work through is that reconstituting observable maintenance capability.

the bases at tyndale are operating again in england is using candles low observable base to do the work on their airplanes. they are fine them back and forth. we also have announced that the long-term home that langley is the preferred alternative for that means working to the bar middle impact statement and looking at what it will take to bet a third f-22 scattering down at langley. langley was originally designed for 3f22 squadrons but we decided to curtail the program we do not build enough low observable maintenance capacity for three squadrons. as we move that ftu will address the low observable maintenance facility requirements at langley. in the meantime we're using facilities out there it industry and taking a look at some of the facilities we built at home and and when we had f-22's there what we can do in the short term to make use of the facilities we have two start buying back the

acronym that talks about how you present the low observable signature of the after two to two an enemy and monitor that is part of the mission capable status to the f-22. we are looking for ways to rebuild that capacity that we lost as we work through but as far as building them downrange we have ways to do it downrange and expeditionary fashion is not as effective or efficient is doing it in our big home station facility so we will continue to do that the same way we've been doing it. >> [inaudible] >> hello. thank you for your presentation. teresa hitchens with breaking dissent. you mentioned doing operations in the competition they with information warfare. can you explain to me what your

vehicle mandate is thereby cip? it seems to me that there are some fairly gray legal issues there. >> there are certainly our policy and legal issues and any authority we have to do that come down from the president either through the secretary of defense or through the nsa and down through the units who do it and different places. this year we received some authorities for 24 air force to operate and in that national space but you are right but all the authorities -- we won't run an air force independent information warfare campaign but provide capabilities that will be operated either by the intelligence community or by cocom under the direction of the secretary of defense. our job is to build capability that they can choose from and to direct and use. >> thank you.

david, international pit in the press recently we saw a launch of the ground launch cruise missile, is the air force looking to get back in the [inaudible] business and if not, what do you see the integration of this in acc features enough of defense capabilities? >> you know, i think i would probably know the same you do about that test from what i thought reported in the press. i don't have anything to say about it beyond that. air combat command will work together with the apartment of defense to think about the right mix, long-range, short range and then often penetrating options for our forces and i'm not in the loop on that test or the national policy issues that would go with deciding if we will field a ground launch cruise missile or not. >> [inaudible]

>> there is a microphone, jack so they can hear you on television. >> i've been told i've been too loud. thank you for the microphone. [laughter] jack, boeing company. i know you will talk to congressional staffers this afternoon and can you share some of your major soundbites on [inaudible] and the requirement for that as you get them to restore your funding? >> we are happy with the recognition and department of defense and in general in the congress and if you saw those two sides assured you at the end of the presentation are hold joint force depends on our ability to control exploit air and space and the cyber capabilities to help us do that. as we go forward in the future we have to think about what is next as the work we are doing for next generation air dominance. it starts with those three overreaching capabilities like i said with multi- domain awareness, advanced the panel management and medications that will take to communicate with

any system that we might go after. then we are pursuing the research and risk reduction that say what is next and how we maintain that dominance in the air of what those guys pulled in the circle as we go to the future in we are working with the congress to make sure we have the funding to do that and when we found the defense budget is a zero sum game that had to fit under a top line we work through this process with the committee and as a move money to a place they think there's any begotten place to take it so we work through and try to let congress know how we are spending that money and likely think it's important to spend it with the benefit is to get from spending that money on the schedule we played out. it's what we do in every program across the department and part of the process as we work through it and we appreciate the role they play in it and look forward to the chance to continue to expand what we are trying to come. >> [inaudible]