by Vivek Ahuja
“Roger. Uh…rhino-actual copies all.”
Sudarshan noted the hesitation. So he decided to make things clear: “listen to me clearly, son. We can see all of these buggers moving in and we are not about to sit here wriggling our thumbs. We have anticipated this. Rhino is ordered to dig in. Finish off whatever we miss. But do not let the enemy take control of the highway. Is that understood?”
“Understood, sir. We will make our stand here.”
Sudarshan nodded: “good. Steel-actual, out.” He handed the speaker back to the comms officer. “Now this show is in the hands of the air-force. We better hope they pull it off, or rhino is dead meat.”
The airspace in western Rajasthan had been crowding up ever since mongol-three first detected the Babur cruise-missile launches near Quetta. Since the war had started, the unique radar signature of the ground-launched Pakistani missile had been passed around between all airborne-radar aircraft. This allowed for earlier warnings, as was the case here. Mongol-three had spent the warning time to bring up interceptor aircraft. They had also alerted the ground-based anti-air units of the army near Rahim Yar Khan. The latter would work as a second-layer defense, mopping up whatever the air-force fighters were unable to get.
The first set of aircraft that dived from altitude were a trio of Mirage-2000s from No. 1 Squadron. They would go after the inbound Babur missiles. The quartet of Su-30s at high-altitude switched afterburners and accelerated west to ensure that the PAF did not intervene. An indicator of how high this battle ranked in the Pakistani mindset, three F-16s were detected as they lifted off from Quetta. The Su-30s would ensure that they posed themselves as a solid wall between the F-16s and the diving Mirage-2000s. Considering the state of the PAF by this time in the war, the use of their remaining fighters as top cover for ground forces was noted by the mongol-three crew and passed on to commanders on the ground.
Further east, five Mig-27s thundered over the international border in the desert.. They would concentrate on the inbound enemy attack helicopters, forcing them to abandon their attack and retreat. Sending fixed-wing aircraft after low-flying helicopters was an iffy business. The best counter for an attack helicopter was another attack helicopter, especially in terrain where the attackers could stay out of range. Ideally, the Apache gunships would have gone after the Pakistani Cobras. But the Apaches were already moving into positions to play hell with the inbound T-80 columns.
To support this aerial armada, two IL-78 refueling tankers entered the cold skies above the Indian desert. They would stay in their patrols here waiting to refuel whoever was thirsty after combat. The airborne-radar however, had to be closer to the events. The Phalcon entered Pakistani airspace, trailing behind the fighters. It was technically over Indian controlled Pakistani land, but this marked the first time an Indian airborne-radar aircraft had penetrated enemy airspace.
And it wouldn’t be the last.
The Pakistani army was learning the hard way, what it meant to fight in skies controlled by the enemy. Their ground and aviation forces were paying the price. For the army-aviation forces, the reversals in the skies above had proven extremely costly. Amongst all elements that made up the army, the highest attrition rate had been within their helicopter squadrons. They had gone into battle armed with French puma transports, some American Huey transports and cobra gunships, Russian Mi-17 and Mi-35 gunships as well as an assortment of utility helicopters. Almost all of these had now been ravaged to the point of extinction.
The Mi-17 units had been used exclusively in Kashmir. They had the endurance and power to be able to fly in the very high-altitudes of the Himalayas. The UH-1 Huey units were being used in Punjab and Jammu along with the handful of Mi-35s in a gunship role.
Out here in the desert, however, the puma and cobra units were in play. Pakistan had a fleet of heavily-used and somewhat-outdated Cobra helicopters provided to them by the United-States in the 1980s. They had been used heavily against the Pakistani Taliban when they were fighting the Islamabad government. The two major units operating the helicopters were deeply-experienced in counterinsurgency combat, almost to the point of weariness.
But that experience didn’t necessarily translate into experience against a technologically-advanced enemy. And the initial mistakes made by the cobra crews against Indian defenses had cost them nearly a third of the overall fleet in the first few hours of the ground war.
Of course, that was when their air-force was putting up a stiff fight against the Indians. But as that cover had eroded, hour by hour, to the point of ineffectiveness, the cobra units had begun to feel the effect. What was, at first, a straight trip from the helipads to the battlefield had now degenerated into long, arduous and winding paths, avoiding the attention of Indian fighters above and airborne radars to the east. Flying had become an art of hop, skip and jump from cover to cover. And if they did somehow make it to the frontlines, the threat of anti-air units firing at them from all directions added to the stress. Finishing that, it was a similar trip back to the rearming point. Not only did all this dramatically increase the time between turnaround flights, reducing their presence and effect on the frontlines, it also exhausted the crews and wore down the machines. The resulting attrition was enormous. And the cobra units had become a nearly spent force.
This counteroffensive against Rahim Yar Khan required the units to muster all available machines. This force, once an awe-inspiring sight of dozens of machines, now represented just five helicopters. It was a sobering sight to the senior pilots and gunners as they had made their way to their parked helicopters.
One thing about fighting over home turf: the crew recovery from downed helicopters was relatively high, though there had been casualties. As a result, the units now had more pilots and gunners than they had machines. As a result, only the senior crews were going out on missions to maximize what little effect they could make…
As the five helicopters came to a hover over the trees on the west bank of the Indus river, their gunners were scanning for targets. There was no way to tell if the eastern bank was now occupied by the Indians or not. Chinese satellite pictures had shown fast-moving columns of Indian reconnaissance platoons. That meant that if the cobra crews got shot down on the eastern bank, there was no guarantee of recovery.
The pilots saw specks of light amplified by their helmet night-vision optics as the Babur missiles streaked over the river, some kilometers north. These missiles would then turn south to hit important targets on the Indian logistical lines before the tank columns engaged in combat.
An abrupt flash of light reflected off the waters of the Indus and disappeared. The cobra pilots continued to hover, being unsure of what they had seen. The deep rumble of the explosion passed through their cockpits, rocking them sideways. And then another explosion further west…
Against the greenish night sky they spotted the clear delta-shaped silhouettes of Indian Mirage-2000s intercepting the predictably-flying Babur missiles. The explosions showed the cobra crews that their attack was already going wrong.
They had to push on, regardless of the obvious threat around them. Under the command of their squadron commander, the five cobras moved out of hover and flew low over the waters of the river. The gunners kept a close eye on the maneuvering Indian fighters to their northeast, guiding the pilots into cover whenever one of them came close. Neither did, so within minutes the helicopters were doggedly making their way east. They were now within a few kilometers of sighting the Indian armor on the highway…
The fast-moving flight of Mig-27s caught them all by surprise, including the Indian pilots, who could not spot the hovering Pakistani helicopters against so much clutter. They flew past their prey and crossed the river. They then began to make a slow arc around.
The Pakistani pilots now knew that they had been spotted on Indian radar. There was no other way to explain the precision with which these enemy pilots were visually looking for their targets out here. They must have been vectored here.
As the Mig-27s again flew within three-hundred meters of the cobras without spotting them, the latter decided they would have to fight their way out. All five helicopters carried with them a pair of stinger missiles. As two of the Mig-27s broke pattern and climbed up to get a better view, the other three aircraft swept over the river again, north of where the cobras were.
The Pakistani squadron commander brought his helicopter around and pitched it up. This instantly put the burning exhausts of the Indian jets in clear contrast with the cold night sky. The first stinger missile leapt off its pylon and arced across the night sky, chasing its target…
Now the game was up. The arcing trajectory of the missile showed the Indian pilots exactly where the cobras were. The five mig-27s broke pattern and dived in different directions, lighting up the entire night sky with a massive pattern of flares. It rendered the entire terrain in flickering shades of orange and yellow. It also destroyed what night-vision anyone had. The stinger missile was an outdated design by modern standards. It flew wildly into the flares and kept climbing until it ran out of fuel before dropping out of the sky like a rock.
But the battle had just begun. All five cobra crews scattered in different direction as the Mig-27s made strafing passes. The helicopters were slow, but maneuverable. Their gunners were busy lacing the night sky with gunfire.
A burst of cannon rounds tore into the tail boom of one of the cobras, instantly shearing off the tail-rotor and sending it into an uncontrolled rotation. The tracers from its chin turret were flying in a circular arc as the helicopter spun and lost altitude. It splashed into the waters of the Indus near the eastern bank and its rotor blades flew off wildly in all directions, twisted and broken.
Three more stingers raced for the sky above. This time one of the Mig-27s flew past and was caught in a tri-lateral threat. The pilot pulled his control stick into his stomach and the aircraft went nearly vertical, climbing on fully power and punching flares behind it. But gravity was against the aircraft and the missiles were much faster and lighter. Two of the missiles struck in quick succession against the flaming engine exhaust and detonated. The pilot ejected just in time as the aircraft shattered to pieces and lost vertical momentum. The burning debris began falling in all directions.
The explosion also lit up the sky. The flickering shadows of the rotating blades instantly became visible. Three of the Mig-27s dived from high altitude and followed their tracer fire into their targets, their rounds impacting the helicopters on the top. It was a deadly place to get hit because that was where all the cockpit glass was. Two more helicopters lost control as the blood-splattered bodies of their crews coated the glass. They flew into the trees east of the river. The fourth helicopter detonated under the impacts and disappeared into a fireball amidst some houses nearby.
By the time the four Mig-27s recovered at higher altitude, two of them were already dangerously low on fuel. The other two pilots went to work protecting their downed comrade like hawks until a Garud search-and-rescue team made its way there. The surviving cobra pilot made good his escape and lived to fight another day, flying west at so low an altitude so as to shear treetop branches with his skids…
Twelve Apache gunships flew over the desert bushes and dunes. The Gladiators, as the unit was called, were out on a hunt tonight.
Painted almost jet black, the two-man crews of the deadly attack helicopters were doing exactly what the cobra pilots had been trying to do to the Indian presence on the highway. But the Apaches didn’t have to fear any enemy aerial interference. The skies above them were under dominance of the Indian Su-30s.
Their target was the northbound convoy of Pakistani armor, heading towards Rahim Yar Khan. It represented the southern jaw of a north-south pincer maneuver that the Pakistanis hoped would break the Indian chokehold on the highway. There were forty-five T-80s in this force and twice that number of mechanized personnel carriers, ferrying infantry to the battle. A smaller force of T-80s was inbound from the north of Rahim Yar Khan. Against all this were just twenty Arjun tanks and a gaggle of infantry units holding the blockade on the highway. The Pakistanis were throwing in everything they had.
But the gladiators were out here to lend a hand to the Kulkarni’s tank crews. The helicopters each carried sixteen hellfire missiles. For twelve birds, that made for more missiles than there were targets. Unlike the TOW missile carried by the cobras, the hellfire missiles were modern, fire-and-forget designs that did not require the Apache crews to expose themselves. The missile would guide itself to the target after launch.
The only real threat that the gladiators faced out here was not the enemy anti-air capabilities, but rather the low-visibility telephone and power cables that crisscrossed the villages and towns. These were extremely had to detect when flying at high-speed, at low-altitude, and during daytime. At night, it got even worse with the limited field of vision of the helmet night-vision optics. Of course, pay too much attention to these and you might miss something important, such as a silently waiting anti-air gun mounted on some rooftop, or a perimeter shoulder-fired missile crew…
The twelve Apaches caught up with the enemy convoy a few kilometers south of Rahim Yar Khan. They flew in from the east and caught the entire convoy trying to move north along the highway. The urban environment had the same funneling effects on these T-80s as it had on Kulkarni’s columns. Both sides were forced on to the roads. And that made for neatly lined targets for the Apache gunners.
Within seconds, they began launching hellfire missiles in a free-for-all target environment. The gunners simply moved the target-tracker boxes from one tank to the other as they ripple-fired their missiles…
The explosions showed up on Kulkarni’s optics as white flashes of light against a green-black horizon. They couldn’t see the enemy tanks just yet, but the enormous volume of light flashes and the deep thunder under their feet was clear enough.
He considered his plans. Sudarshan had kept his word and had brought in every available combat element to bear against this enemy counterattack. But Kulkarni had to deal with whatever made survived this aerial onslaught and reached his tanks.
He moved his sights around and saw the flickering of light and white-grey columns of smoke rising into the sky from the town to his east. Further southeast, a thick column of smoke rose into the night sky where a Babur missile had struck the Indian “Ferrite” counter-battery radar unit. It was now permanently offline. Luckily for Kulkarni, the other missiles had been intercepted by the air-force. He also thanked his stars that the enemy attack helicopters that had been stopped and turned back. And to his north, Indian Jaguar strike-aircraft were busy hitting the southbound column of enemy armor.
There would be survivors from both these columns. And they would be looking for a fight when they got here.
Kulkarni knew this. But he had to make up his mind. Should he go after the northern column, since they were far more likely to survive the Jaguar strikes? Or should he wait here for them to come to him? The southern column was another story. He hoped that the Apaches would lay waste to that column so much that they would be delayed in their coordinated attack with the northern column and at best, realize the hopelessness of the cause and retreat further south before the Apaches returned with more missiles to finish them off.
He brought up the comms: “all rhino-alpha elements, this is rhino-actual. We are moving to contact against the northern column of enemy armor. Alpha-three will hang back and hold the line against anything that the Apache drivers miss to the south. Hold your ground until we return. Everyone else, prepare to move in five minutes. Out.”
He looked at his crew: “questions?”
The gunner and the loader shared a look and then shook their heads. The silence from the driver’s seat was his answer. Kulkarni nodded and muttered an “okay” to himself before bringing the ABAMS screen around: “driver, we will lead the charge. Bring us out of this defilade and on the west side of the highway, facing north. We will lash out to the northwest towards t
he Indus river and then swing back east, hitting the enemy column on his right flank. Hopefully they will be expecting an attack on the left flank and that will buy us some tactical surprise.”
“Understood, sir. Ready when you are.” The turret vibrated as the engine came alive. The loader removed a sabot round from the storage and pushed it into the gun breech. The latter closed with the clang.
Kulkarni looked at his loader: “how’s our supply?”
“We have enough for this battle, sir. But after that we have to rearm.”
Kulkarni made a mental note of that and went back to his sights. They had been using up their high-explosive rounds at a much higher rate in this urban terrain than they had accounted for. Sabot rounds were well within pre-calculated usage predictions. As always, the army had been caught preparing for the last war. The urban combat being encountered by Indian tanks all along the border from Punjab to Rajasthan was soaking up the resupply logistics…
“Rhino-alpha, move out! Rhino-actual has the lead!”
The tank lurched forward and pitched up as it climbed over the sand embankment created by the trishul combat-engineers and then down the other side. As they became horizontal, the gunner moved the main gun to auto-stabilization. Kulkarni went to his sights, rotating it around to see fifteen other tanks following him. At the moment all of his tanks were staggered randomly. He would have to change that to create some sense of unit cohesion. He pushed some commands on the ABAMS screen to indicate to platoon commanders where he wanted them to be, relative to his own tank. Within minutes, he saw the other tanks making abrupt changes in their motion…