by Vivek Ahuja
A few moments later the two Bisons went supersonic…
OVER THE TIBET AUTONOMOUS REGION
DAY 3 + 1800 HRS
While the battle over Se-La was being fought, the single Tu-154 electronic-warfare aircraft from the PLAAF 26TH Air Division loitered over the beautiful vegetated valleys of what had been eastern Tibet at some time in history. On board the aircraft the crew of EW officers was manning their consoles as they attempted to support the 33RD Fighter Division assets over Arunachal Pradesh.
Flying to their north was a single KJ-2000 AWACS aircraft on patrol coordinating the air defense of southern Tibet. The Tu-154 was under the protection of this aircraft and its supporting squadron of J-8IIs on air-defense tasking from the 33RD Fighter Division.
Approaching this force were the two Indian Mig-21s armed with one R-77 each and one Israeli made electronic-warfare pod each. They were being guided to their targets by the CABS AEW aircraft over Assam that had detected the Tu-154 through its jamming efforts a short while ago.
The only other weapons the two Indian pilots had was the element of surprise. The Chinese would not expect them to be back in the sky so soon after taking heavy losses against the J-7s. If anything, they would have been expected to go in support of their Su-30s to the west.
The sheer audacity of the operation was the key to its success.
Hitting the enemy exactly where they didn’t expect to be hit was crucial in affecting his psychology. And daring was a key element to achieving this.
But executing the operation was not so simple. The two Bisons were going up against a dedicated electronic-warfare aircraft. And that meant they could not activate their own radars until the very last moment, lest they give away their presence or worse, allow the crew on board the Chinese aircraft to interfere with their guidance radars.
That made them passive. And dependent on the radar picture from their AEW support over Assam. It also made them very vulnerable to what lay far to the north. They could not activate their EW pods pre-emptively either or else they would give their game away indirectly. Only when they had been engaged by hostile forces were they to go active on both their radars and self-defense jammers.
The two pilots could not help but feel naked deep into Chinese airspace. Their only warning system was the passive on-board RWRs. This had already detected the emissions from the KJ-2000 radar to the north. With each passing second, they neared their intended target…
The tension in the cockpits increased.
Two minutes away from being close enough to take their R-77 shot at a good engagement range, the RWRs started squawking inside their ears indicating that a flight of J-8IIs had activated radars to the north and were painting them for a missile shot.
The game was up.
The two Mig-21s did not budge away from their flight-path. Their job was not done and they weren’t going home empty handed. Deep inside enemy airspace, the two pilots finally activated their electronic-warfare pods and went active on their missile guidance radars...
Take the damn shot!
A voice in the flight-leader’s head shouted. His index finger rested on the launch button. Every second of delay meant greater chances of killing the target. But give it too much time and chances were that the J-8IIs would knock them out of the sky without warning. The trade-off was the key to success…
“Blue-Five. Taking the shot...now!”
He said over the radio and pressed the launch button on his control-stick. The cockpit shuddered as the R-77 round fell off the pylon, lit its motor and boosted it away. His wingman did the same and the two missiles were on their way.
Twenty kilometers to the north, the Tu-154 flight-crew was banking their aircraft to its limits to deal with the sudden and unexpected threat that had materialized just south of them. As the operators behind were shouting at each other and trying to deal with the two missiles heading for them, the Major flying the aircraft and his co-pilot had already pushed the engines to full-throttle and were diving as best as their aircraft would allow.
They had received warning of the threat from the KJ-2000 crew two minutes ago, and that provided barely enough time to react on an aircraft converted out of an outdated airliner. Inside the cockpit they could hear the radio chatter from the J-8II pilots about to engage the two Indian intruders. The latter were racing south on full afterburners.
But it wasn’t enough.
A few seconds later the flight crew on the Tu-154 were shaken in their seats as the first Indian missile slammed into the port wing flaps and detonated. The cabin to the rear was instantly shredded with shrapnel. This killed a good number of the operators where they sat. The port wing broke away from the fuselage and the large aircraft rolled over uncontrollably just as the cabin suddenly depressurized and broke into pieces.
When the second R-77 slammed into what remained of the aircraft fuselage, the Tu-154 disintegrated midair...
The extremely small speck of white light in the night sky amplified by the NVGs was cue for the Indian pilots that their job was done. Their radar display said the same thing. By now their RWRs were screaming of inbound threats all around them, they had no weapons to release other than cannon rounds and fuel was low. There was every motivation for the two Indian pilots to break flight, dive for the deck, throw chaff and flares all over the sky and begin praying that their fuel would last the extended low level flight back to Indian airspace...
LEH AIRBASE
LADAKH
DAY 3 + 1930 HRS
It needed to be done quickly.
The airbase was still under threat from almost regular Chinese cruise-missile attacks and it only took one shot to make it lethal for a target as large as the Il-76 parked on an open tarmac. It was therefore no surprise to Wing-Commander Dutt that it had taken so long for his airlift to take place. What had been planned for the morning had taken till nightfall…
The Chinese are scoring high on that account with their cruise-missiles!
Dutt walked down the open ramp of the Il-76 and stepped on the cold concrete tarmac of Leh.
He watched as the first of the two LCH helicopters were manhandled out of the belly of the Il-76 by the ground crews. Other crewmen were removing containers holding equipment and maintenance supplies required to operate these helicopters. Another pair of airmen was holding the long blades on both end and walking out of the aircraft with them. The CO of the resident Cheetah helicopter unit, the 119HU ‘Siachen Pioneers’, was standing alongside Dutt as his men helped the newly inducted 199HU to get oriented with the base, weather and terrain.
Dutt looked around. The base was a scene of hectic activity. Cheetah, Dhruv and Mi-17 helicopters were continuously landing or lifting off the airbase. Soldiers from the army were busy offloading stretchers with wounded soldiers on those helicopters as they flew in. Already as the Il-76 that Dutt had flown in on was being emptied, lines of stretchers with injured soldiers were being put down on the tarmac nearby to be loaded aboard as the large transport aircraft would be converted into an ambulance on its way out of Leh.
Every inch of the tarmac on the other side of the airbase was occupied by lines of An-32s, Il-76s, C-17s and C-130Js that were flying in rapidly needed supplies and fresh units to join the battle for Ladakh. It was a high tech scene that was also strangely reminiscent of the 62 war.
History repeated itself in concept if not in details…
By now the first LCH had already been moved to a cleared section of the tarmac and the ground crewmen along with the HAL volunteers who had come along in the Il-76 were busy installing the main rotor blades on the helicopters while others were already refueling the fuel tanks. All the while the former test pilots from Bangalore were collaborating with the operational pilots of 109HU and 119HU over maps lit by hand held flashlights alongside the parked LCH…
By the time the base CO and some other senior officers at Leh drove up to the tarmac to talk to Dutt about future unit employment, the first two LCHs were already getting ready f
or war.
WESTERN TIBET-BHUTAN BORDER
DAY 3 + 2200 HRS
Major Kwatra sat silently in the rear seat along with the Royal Bhutanese Army Lieutenant-Colonel Iyonpo. Their three jeep convoy drove by the frozen waters of the large high-altitude lakes near the Chomolhari peaks. The ride was bumpy and uneven as they drove on the fair-weather road that had been recently constructed to support the RBA units stationed on border security duty.
The reason why Kwatra, posted to the Indian-Military-Training-Team, or IMTRAT, was here was because of the precarious nature of this section of the Tibet-Bhutan border. Sitting between the majestic Chomolhari peaks to the south and other sister peaks to the north, the border along this sector jutted into Tibetan territory beyond the foothills of the peaks. To get here, the RBA units had to cross the ridges and peaks behind them.
On the other side of the border was the People’s Liberation Army. Their crucial highway from Gyantse to the Sikkim border near Chumbi valley passed less than a dozen kilometers at the closest point with this sector of the Bhutanese border. As such, it was far easier to access this side of the border than it was from the Bhutanese side, and that made the RBA positions extremely vulnerable.
And it had been so since decades.
Over the years the Bhutanese had built a fair-weather one-ton road here. Once RBA soldiers crossed the peaks behind them on foot or via helicopters, they could use these roads to move around in vehicles on their side of the border. This had allowed the Bhutanese Army to station more units in the sector to improve security. But to put things in perspective, the RBA never had more than two Companies of infantry supported by mortars in this sector.
By comparison, the PLA across them had an entire Battalion supported by heavy artillery and light armor units devoted to this sector.
If a battle was fought, it would be short.
The vehicles moved through a bumpy sector of the road and Kwatra had to hold on for his life. Once clear, he looked around and saw that from where they were now, he could see outlines of the hills surrounding the Dochen-Tso to the north and the long convoys of Chinese vehicles moving along the highway to the south.
This sector is a gold mine for intelligence gathering on the Chinese!
The three jeeps stopped abruptly and he looked around to notice that they were just west of the freezing lakes. Iyonpo stepped out of the vehicle and walked over to an RBA Captain standing near the edge of the road along with two of his soldiers. All three men were in white winter uniforms.
The Captain pointed out the locations of Chinese units nearby. A few seconds later Iyonpo turned to his Indian colleague:
“So, what do you think?”
“It’s too valuable for us and it’s too valuable for them. So they will try and deny it to us. Your men are extremely vulnerable here, sir,” Kwatra paused and looked at the terrain again.
“What are you saying, Major?” Iyonpo asked.
“Just that when this thing begins, your men here are going to get hit before we do!” Iyonpo sighed.
“Then Bhutan will get dragged into this war as well…”
DAULAT BEG OLDI
LADAKH
DAY 3 + 2300 HRS
Yet another flight of Jaguars streaked over the plains east of DBO. By now the Chinese anti-air vehicles had deployed around their forces and were making life a living hell for the Indian pilots.
The IAF had employed its might to help halt the convoys of armor vehicles that were rolling against the Indian defenders in several sectors in Ladakh. While effective, it was an effort that had proven costly and getting costlier as large numbers of anti-air units began taking their toll…
Brigadier Adesara looked through an IMFS as the valley lit up with lines high-intensity tracer fire directed towards the Indian aircraft attacking Chinese armor. Then there was a shower of sparks and a few fireballs to the east as yet another set of Chinese armored vehicles fell prey to cluster munitions. The rumble passed along the ground and under the feet of the Indian soldiers manning the defenses around DBO a few seconds later…
It had been a big relief for Adesara and Sudarshan when the long line of BMPs from the 10TH Mechanized Battalion had rolled into view coming in from Saser to the south. They were rolling in with their with hatches open and the crews sitting openly over the rim of the turrets as the Indian Jaguars continued to press their attacks to the east beyond the LAC.
Then there was a flash of light to the east.
All Indian soldiers at DBO looked in that direction and saw the burning debris of an Indian Jaguar falling out of the sky. It slammed into the slopes of a hill to the north and erupted into a fireball. No parachute was spotted. The other Jaguars pulled out of the sector a few seconds later.
Adesara thanked the departing Jaguars for their attempts to hold back the Chinese from overrunning his men. They had bought time at the cost of their blood and had allowed the Brigade to receive urgent reinforcements. Now that the 10TH Mechanized Battalion was fully deployed, if the Chinese decided to make a run for Daulat-beg-oldi again, they would be made to pay the price for it.
day 4
WESTERN TIBET-BHUTAN BORDER
DAY 4 + 0740 HRS
“Incoming fire!”
Major Kwatra shouted as he saw vehicles on the Chinese side of the border rumbling out of their revetments. The Bhutanese soldiers were already running into their prepared positions. Moments later the skies filled with the screaming noise of incoming artillery shells. The first rounds slammed amongst the Bhutanese positions west of the frozen lakes.
Kwatra jumped into the nearest trench along with Iyonpo. The Captain commanding the Bhutanese forces here was moving through the positions and passing orders. He was suddenly ripped by several rounds of machinegun fire from the advancing group of PLA armored-personnel-carriers.
The three Bhutanese army jeeps were raked by cannon fire from the ZBDs advancing into Bhutanese territory. Kwatra looked around for options.
There were none.
There was no question of fighting off the Chinese tanks with weapons at the disposal of the Bhutanese soldiers here.
He quickly got hold of a radio and pushed through to IMTRAT headquarters at Haa Dzong with an urgent request for assistance. There he was instantly put through to Lieutenant-General Potgam, the current Indian commander for Bhutan.
A few minutes after the desperate call from Kwatra was received, the request for assistance went up the command line from Potgam to General Yadav at Army headquarters and from him down to Lieutenant-General Suman.
By the time the first Indian high-altitude Heron UAV was diverted from patrol over the Chumbi valley and directed over Dochen-Tso region further north, it was clear that the two Bhutanese infantry companies were under threat of being destroyed by the advancing mechanized units of the Chinese 55TH Division.
The war for the Chumbi valley and the survival of Bhutan had begun.
OVER SOUTHERN BHUTAN
DAY 4 + 0820 HRS
The first flight of four Mig-27Ms from No. 222 Squadron at Hashimara airbase armed with heavy ordinance tore into Bhutanese airspace fifteen minutes later.
The pilots could see the snowcapped Chomolhari peak to their left as they headed out north. The onboard RWRs were already screeching with warning sounds as they realized that they were being washed by long-range airborne radars from Tibet.
But that could not be helped now. A friendly unit with Indian army advisors on the ground was being crushed by Chinese armor forces in the three-lake region.
And they needed help.
The pilots noted the massive Dochen-Tso to the northwest beyond the Chomolhari peak and saw the line of peaks of the Great Himalayan Range that separated Bhutan from Tibet. They had their location on GLONASS navigation assistance in their cockpits, but the mark-one eyeball was still as much needed today as it was a century ago. Two minutes later they were within visual range of the three lakes beyond the peaks. They were now flying over the Chumbi valley and the RW
Rs were screeching madly as Chinese anti-air units noted the arrival of Indian aircraft in the skies above...
WESTERN TIBET-BHUTAN BORDER
DAY 4 + 0830 HRS
The leading ZBD staggered to a halt after a jarring explosion ripped through its hull. A column of flames burst out of the hatches as thick black smoke filled the air…
The two Bhutanese soldiers manning the Carl-Gustav rocket-launcher took cover after taking the shot as the ground around their positions churned with impacting cannon rounds from other Chinese vehicles.
The twelve ZBDs had stopped a small distance away from the Bhutanese trenches as eight other vehicles from another group had bypassed the Bhutanese from the north and were continuing to move east towards the foothills and the three-lake region.
As of now there was nothing to stop the Chinese advance to the foothills of the Chomolhari. The only positions holding out were the prepared bunkers and trenches where Iyonpo and Kwatra were trying to organize a defense…
Chinese soldiers inside the back of the armored-personnel-carriers were already debussing. Many had taken positions alongside their vehicles and were supporting their vehicles with assault rifle fire. Mortar rounds were falling around the Bhutanese positions now.
Iyanpo spotted the Indian Mig-27s overhead against the blue skies overhead. He shouted Kwatra above the sounds of the gunfire. Kwatra heard the Bhutanese officer from his position and looked away from the optics of his INSAS rifle to see…
The four Mig-27s were now in a racetrack pattern as each aircraft dived into the fray. The flight-leader in the first aircraft pushed his aircraft into a shallow dive and pulled up just after releasing the first of his dumb bombs. Less fancy than other modern weapons, these bombs were nonetheless extremely powerful when aimed properly.