by Vivek Ahuja
The two vehicles now being uncovered were the TELs for the 862 Missile Regiment of the Indian army. Each vehicle was armed with three launch canisters. Each of these canisters was loaded with a Block-II variant of the Brahmos cruise-missile. They had enough firepower within these two launch vehicles to decimate the better part of a small town within five minutes. But that was not why there were here today.
Two vehicles with three missiles each meant a total of six deadly warheads. A cruise speed three times the speed of sound and a travel distance of three hundred kilometers to target allowed for a roughly five minute flight. Such a short launch to impact time could surprise anybody, anytime and anywhere.
The issue however, was terrain.
The current launch point was at six-thousand feet above sea-level. Se-La peaks to the northwest were at fourteen to fifteen thousand feet above sea-level. The Great Himalayas peaks went as high as sixteen thousand feet, and then the Tibetan plateau remained at roughly the same altitude from there to Lhasa. High supersonic velocities like those of the Brahmos missiles do not allow low-level terrain-contour-matching or TERCOM flights through the valleys without drastic reduction in range, if at all. So the missile had to climb above these peaks rather than fly between them and in doing so make themselves visible to Chinese air defenses. But that could hardly be avoided at the moment.
The Major in charge of the two launchers walked around the back of one of the vehicles after having done his visual checks. He walked past the driver’s cabin on the front and slapped the door twice, letting the personnel inside know he was done with his checks. On their end they had already gone through their pre-launch process. Once the Major gave them the go ahead, the two TELs came to life with the hydraulic pumps pushing the canister tubes from horizontal position to vertical.
Inside the launch control cabin, several officers were busy loading target information into the missile fire-control system. The Major in command of the detachment was monitoring the activities over the shoulder of the men sitting on the consoles. By this time small orange warning lights were flashing near the vehicles for everybody to clear the area. The Lieutenant sitting at the fire-control console announced a “Ready” to all in mobile command trailer. The Major verified the numbers and turned to the Lieutenant:
“Fire!”
The Lieutenant flipped open the cover over the lit button labeled “LAUNCH” and then depressed the button.
A second later the ground vibrated as the first Brahmos Block-II cruise-missile streaked out of the canister on the first vehicle under the force of its solid-rocket-booster and raced vertically for the cloudy sky above. Several seconds later the booster exhausted itself and was ejected from the missile. Then the ramjet engine blasted into operation and propelled the missile even higher. With the booster ejection the missile lost all visible smoke trails just as the missile disappeared through the low gray cloud cover. But all of the Indian soldiers nearby heard a thunderclap announcing that the Indian missiles had gone supersonic...
LHASA AIRPORT
SOUTHERN TIBET
DAY 1 + 1600 HRS
Unlike Dirang, the skies were clear blue over southern Tibet. Over Lhasa, there were no clouds but the bright blue background was littered with pairs of thin white contrails forming large circles from the large number of Chinese military aircraft. The clarity of the cold mountain air showed new pairs of contrails approaching from the northeast…
The airspace over Lhasa was busy this afternoon. There were twelve J-11 fighters flying overhead on patrols while another six J-8IIs from the 33RD Fighter Division were on the ground being refueled. These were providing security to the small groups of Il-76 heavy transport aircraft that had been plying back and forth between Lhasa and other airbases to the northeast. On the ground, there were two Il-76s being hurriedly unloaded while another was approaching from Lanzhou. These aircraft were bringing in supplies and reinforcement troops for the PLA 13TH Group Army who’s Divisions were now in contact with the Indian IV Corps in Arunachal Pradesh.
There was no warning.
The six Brahmos missiles streaking across the cold morning skies over southern Tibet were detected by Chinese radar stations south of Lhasa just as they crossed the McMahon line. But with less than three minutes before impact, there was little that could be achieved with that small a warning window. Klaxons sounded all over Lhasa and everybody dumped what they were doing on the tarmac and began running for cover. Within thirty seconds the first Brahmos cruise-missile flashed over the peaks south of Lhasa and dived into the airport, the sun glinting over its sleek metallic body. The air-defense batteries around Lhasa managed to fire several missiles into the air against the Indian missiles, but the latter were just too fast to be intercepted at this late a stage in their flight.
The ground shook like an earthquake.
The two Chinese Il-76s on the ground didn’t stand a chance. The Indian DIPAC had been watching the Chinese activities at Lhasa for hours now. They knew that a certain section of the tarmac was always being occupied by the incoming Il-76s and they had promptly handed over that piece of intelligence information to the army and the air-force.
The first missile slammed into the ground between the two parked aircraft. Such was the accuracy of the Brahmos Block-II. As the wall of concrete and fire expanded outwards and enveloped the two aircraft in split seconds, both aircraft and the PLA’s precious supplies inside them were instantly shredded. The shockwave from the explosion rippled through the tarmac into all of the airport buildings and facilities...
Even as the shockwave from the first detonation expanded outwards, the second missile slammed into the main terminal building at the airport and decimated it with its large explosive warhead. The debris was still falling when two other Brahmos missiles slammed into sections of the main runway at almost equal intervals and cratered sections of it, dividing the runway into three one-third sections unusable to any but the lightest of aircraft. No aircraft could now use this runway for the time being. The fifth missile slammed into the parked J-8IIs on the other side of the tarmac and destroyed them. When that fireball rose into the sky like a mushroom cloud of smoke and dust several seconds later, it had left a large shallow crater where the parked J-8IIs had been.
The sixth and final missile slammed into the white radar dome of the long-range radar station manned by crews of the 42ND Radar Regiment south of Lhasa and destroyed the radar dome from the ground up. The station was mounted on flat terrain with long line-of-sights. When the fireball rose underneath the station and the dome shredded into a thousand fragments, it had a lot of audience from the PLA convoys driving down the roads nearby towards the Chumbi valley…
The strike neutralized all aerial resupply operations at Lhasa airport in fewer than two minutes. Moreover, long-range radar support for the southern skies now had a large hole carved inside. At Chengdu, an angered Chen was left with no choice but to divert all aircraft flying overhead to other airbases in the north and east.
As the mushroom cloud over the airport dissipated and smoke and debris settled around the airport, the blue skies above no longer had circular contrails, only straight ones heading radially away...
KASHGAR AIRBASE
SINKIANG AUTONOMOUS REGION
CHINA
DAY 1 + 1630 HRS
Feng was finding himself in a difficult situation with Major-General Zhigao. The latter man had reminded Feng exactly what he thought of his posting to Kashgar minutes after he had landed at the airbase. But Chen outranked them both, so if he ordered them to work together, there was little choice in the matter. Zhigao had left Feng to his work without further ado after the initial meeting in his office. With that behind him, Feng had hoped his existence here would prove easier. But that was not to be.
As he had come to discover in his few hours here, Zhigao was not a realist. He was a supreme optimist in his own abilities as commander. And that was dangerous for both himself as well as the men under his command. Feng noticed that Z
higao had more bluster in him than battlefield competence. The lack of the latter was not uncommon within the PLAAF, as Feng, Chen and Wencang all knew. The Chinese had not fought an air war since the Korean War. They had certainly not done so against any decent air-force in the last few decades. They had a whole lot of shiny new equipment and young officers trained on the technical aspects.
Instead, many within the PLAAF had actually bought the propaganda they had grown up on and embedded it into their mindset. The Indians, in their minds, were nothing more than weak fools unable to withstand the might of China, the armed forces and economic might. The Tibetans were subhuman. The Chinese air-force of the new century could easily sweep aside any threats. The list went on. And unfortunately for Feng, his current sector commander, Zhigao, was a product of this class.
And while Zhigao exuded reckless confidence in the face of danger, Feng often had to fight his own mind from becoming defeatist. That was the other end of the spectrum for him. He had to respect the enemy, in this case the Indians, but could hardly do so at the cost of his own country and its air-force. Accepting Indian dominance over a technological niche area was not an option. It was his job and duty to find ways around such problems and defeat the Indians on their own turf.
He also understood that men like Zhigao often made to high ranking positions more on political backing and corruption than real potential as combat leaders. This was especially true of the PLA, which controlled the lion’s share of the vast military-industrial empire within China. Men like Zhigao within the PLA often spent more time running their corners of this empire than in their operations centers. How much of that was true for Zhigao was anybody’s guess. But one thing was clear to Feng: he had to tread lightly unless he wished to have himself put against a wall for some trumped up charges like lack of belief. Laughable perhaps, but it had happened to several middle-ranking officers over the years that had run afoul of their bosses. Chen would not always be around to save his skin.
As he stood inside the operations center at Kashgar, supervising the PLAAF operations near the Aksai Chin in Ladakh, Feng understood that the outcome of the battles to come would be dependent on whether he could erode Zhigao’s boundless optimism while improving his own aggression towards the Indians…
A Lieutenant-Colonel walked over to him and handed him a folder with some satellite imagery of airbases in Kashmir and Ladakh that had been hit by the Chinese cruise-missiles thus far. He opened the file and glanced through the images…and frowned.
“Is that all that they achieved?”
“Yes Sir. Leh is operational again as far as we can tell. We did manage to do some damage to their ability to bring in larger transports. You can see that in the third image: the runway is damaged to the point that the Indians cannot bring in Il-76 or C-17s transports into Leh for some time. But the Mig-29s are back. See this one parked outside their undamaged hardened shelters in image four, taken a few hours after our strike. Our attacks also destroyed two Indian cheetah helicopters as seen in image five and six,” the Lieutenant-Colonel replied.
Feng nodded. He knew exactly why the hardened shelters had not been hit. Their guidance systems were not nearly accurate enough for that level of precision targeting.
“The destruction of those helicopters is inconsequential to us. The same is true for their transport aircraft. I am very sure that our land forces have enough capability to not be worried about their force-reconstitution abilities. But what worries me is that we were unable to prevent fighters operating from this airbase and the others for too long,” Feng said just as Zhigao walked into the operations center.
“I understand our missile strikes were not nearly as effective as we had hoped?” Zhigao said sharply. His tone pointed the blame to Feng, who picked it up instantly. But he had to let it go.
“I agree, sir. We will not be able to hold off Indian air attacks against our ground forces if we do not knock out these airbases more permanently and push them south. Our cruise-missile attacks haven’t done the required amount of damage. The initial estimates were overly optimistic. The idea was that we would be able to inflict enough damage on their airbases to buy us time on the ground. It seems that it worked better in the eastern sectors. But out here the damage to these airbases has been nominal.”
General Zhigao dismissed the assessment.
“Perhaps. But we have the S-300s deployed all along the roads, do we not? They can handle the pesky Indian air attacks.”
Feng took a deep breath on that one as held back his thoughts.
Really? How would you explain the complete demolition of the airbase at Lhasa thirty minutes ago?
Are those pesky attacks too?
“What we need to do is draw out their heavy fighters into a decisive battle and end their hopes for air superiority. After that we can crush the attempts of their low level bombers to stop our land forces.” Zhigao said and then turned to the Lieutenant-Colonel in charge keeping track of unit deployments.
“What is our operational status?”
Feng handed over the satellite images to his intelligence chief just as the other staff-officer looked up the information Zhigao had ordered for.
“We have a regiment of Su-27s and another of J-8IIs from the 6TH Fighter Division ready for operations out of Kashgar, Urumqi and Korla airbases. The 36TH Bomber Regiment is also ready with its bomber, tanker and special mission H-6s from Lintong airbase. A composite regiment of J-10s is also available from the 44TH Fighter Division in case we require them. The 26TH Air Division has deployed a pair of KJ-2000s and a single KJ-200 at Korla for this sector as well. They will be our airborne command and control aircraft. With these we can initiate attacks in piecemeal fashion and take out the Indian airbases one by one,” the Lieutenant-Colonel concluded. Feng saw the same concern in that officer’s eyes as his own regarding Zhigao’s plans for frontal attacks. But neither man could say anything more. Not openly anyway.
Take the hint, Zhigao. Airbases are the key here, not the fighters themselves…
“No. We will concentrate on taking out their fighters first in a series of massive blows. They pose the biggest threat to us. We can use the bombers as bait to lure out the Indians into out backyards where we will kill them. Once the skies over Ladakh are clear, the bombers can finish their missions,” Zhigao said, sticking with his original plans.
Feng was horrified. And he imagined the same was true for the Lieutenant-Colonel too. Both men shared a glance as the latter walked back to the consoles inside the center, leaving Feng and Zhigao in the conference room.
Brilliant! If the Indians shoot down our fighters, we are likely going to hand them our bombers on a tray as well.
Feng thought of placing a call to Chen to supersede Zhigao’s foolhardy plans. But decided against it. If Zhigao came to know about Feng’s actions, there would be no end to the trouble Feng could find himself in.
There is always a possibility that it could in fact work!
Feng corrected himself and wondered if he was being defeatist again. But in doing so he did not consider that he might be overriding his instincts when they might in fact be correct. If the plan did work out, Feng did not fancy being branded a coward in its wake. In the end he had to give his consent.
And he did.
Not that it mattered, of course.
OVER LADAKH
DAY 1 + 1800 HRS
Squadron-Leader Khurana looked at the data in the head’s-up-display or HUD to see his aircraft’s current status.
Altitude was good.
Speed was good.
Attitude and azimuth was good.
Fuel was green.
The Fulcrum was cruising above the mountains with full weapons payload under the wings. Khurana looked left and right to see his finger-four formation of Mig-29s in perfect sync with his own. They were patrolling fifteen kilometers west of the Pangong-Tso just beyond the reach of the long-range S-300 batteries the Chinese had deployed in the Aksai Chin region over the last two months
.
Khurana was making sure that his flight did not drift into the fuzzy detection range for those missile guidance radars. Like his own flight of four, all other Indian aircraft were staying away from the deadly S-300s...
And the sky was getting rather crowded from Khurana’s perspective.
The IAF was out in force in the Ladakh skies for the first phase of operation Phoenix. At the vanguard of the forming aerial armada were the Mig-29s of No. 28 Squadron deployed from Leh and Avantipur. They were tasked primarily for air-defense. Two-hundred kilometers to the south, a single Phalcon AWACS from No. 50 Squadron was also deployed in the skies above Himachal-Pradesh, providing airborne eyes and ears for Air-Marshal Bhosale at the WAC.
Then there were the two large groups of Su-30s just west of Khurana’s Mig-29s. One of these groups had eight Su-30s from No. 17 Squadron “Golden Arrows” and was on standby to support the Mig-29s should the PLAAF appear in force. These were also tasked with the job of protecting the Phalcon in case the Mig-29s were fully committed into the fight. Nobody at WAC wanted nasty Chinese anti-AWACS surprises at this time…
The Indians weren’t the only ones in the skies, of course.
Khurana was checking the output of the RWR. It was showing some ground-based, long-range Chinese radars in Aksai-Chin and to the north beyond the Karakoram pass. Then there was a single Chinese KJ-2000 AWACS aircraft flying far to the north. No fighter emissions were being detected. Chinese ones, that is.
A hundred kilometers to the west beyond the Siachen glacier, two Pakistani F-16 radars were active and tracking the Indian aerial armada gathering over Ladakh. That was potentially worrisome. The Pakistanis were acting aggressive already, and the war between India and China was less than a day old.