Chimera

by Vivek Ahuja

  “I meant control of this country. Not the war. For now the people are listening to our broadcasts and our control of the external media availability within the borders of China has been effective. Do not expect that to continue when the people find out that their supplies of oil, gas and other commodities is being cut back or reduced. If that were to happen, we would have riots throughout the countryside and a revolt outside this building within hours, not days!”

  “What are our reserves for fuel and other imported commodities? For the war, I mean,” Peng asked the PLA commander.

  “The armed forces are sufficiently armed and equipped with quantities of fuel for another thirty days of combat given the declining rate of combat intensity at the border and accounting for attrition of our reserves to Indian air attacks,” the General read out from his papers. Liu grunted his retort as he leaned forward on the table:

  “This war will not last days! And you all talk of weeks. Fact remains that incompetency on behalf of many in this room has left us little hope for victory and we must accept this fact! And the thirty days of fuel comes from taking it away from local reserves as well as strategic economic reserves. We may have enough fuel for ninety days for our economy to run, but it takes a lot longer to replace the commercial ships that are being picked off by the Indians as we sit here to discuss and glorify tactical advances that are, quite frankly, meaningless! Meaningless!”

  Chen saw everybody in the room shift uncomfortably in their seats on hearing Liu’s words. But Liu was not finished:

  “We have now committed eight more divisions of men to the land war in the Tibet region, is that not correct?” Liu looked to the PLA commander, who nodded. So Liu continued: “The Tibetan rebels are already nipping at our heels, sensing our weakness. And what of the Americans and the Japanese? How long before they sense our weakness and begin taking actions in support of the nationalists? Make no mistake. Our neighbors stand waiting for us to become weak before they take advantage of it. We must not allow that to happen. The Indians have begun to wage total war on us by attempting to destroy our post war economy. Either we must do the same to their fleet by taking control of the seas or ensure that their commercial fleets have no use when their entire economy has been burnt to ashes!”

  Wencang put his pen down in a visibly irate gesture and looked straight at Liu, finally having heard enough tirades against the conventional force commanders in the room.

  “And what of the Indian response, Liu? Hmm?” Wencang said as he leaned over the table aggressively. “Do you think they will simply stay quiet as we nuke their cities and their economy to rubble? If I remember my last intelligence update from your men, their strategic forces were already deployed, were they not? When they see our missiles heading for the sky, what do you think they will do? Would you rather we lose everything we have built over the last sixty-five years to be lost just so that we can do the same to the pathetic Indian economy? I am sorry, but I value our country and its economy far more than I value the destruction of theirs. It will not be a worthy trade!”

  “You have a better plan, Wencang?” Liu said menacingly. “If you and your worthless predecessor had done their jobs correctly, we wouldn’t even be in this situation right now! You lost control of our skies!”

  “I do have a plan!” Wencang shouted back. “I already showed that it works! Give me control of the rest of the missile stocks being held back in reserve by your 821ST Brigade and its long-range cruise-missiles and I will take care of this once and for all! Only nine missiles used so far and we have already disabled two major Indian airbases and stalled their plans for a ground offensive into our territory in the autonomous region. Give me the rest of that Brigade and I will terminate enemy presence over our skies! We will take out their air-support just as our eight new Divisions hit them right in the face!”

  “Don’t forget the Pakistanis…” Chen reminded the room.

  “Ah yes! Those fools! What are they waiting for? Call them up and get them to start mobilizing their army. They have enough forces to ensure that the Indians can’t bring in too many reinforcements to any given front in Tibet. Let them fight a two-front war! Let’s see how long they last under that pressure. This is what the Pakistanis have always wanted, haven’t they? Fine! Let them join the fray. You wanted my plan, Liu? This is my plan!”

  Wencang said and leaned back in his chair as he grabbed a bottle of water from the table. Liu’s face reflected a mask of pure anger. His eyes told Wencang there would be consequences to this tirade when the dust had settled. Wencang was not intimidated, however. And for now both men realized they had to get along else they would find themselves in trouble with the only man commanding more authority than them in the room.

  “Well, General Liu?” Peng asked. “Do you have an objection to this?”

  Liu was still seething at his end of the table but he calmed himself down and looked at Peng:

  “As much as I admit I appreciate General Wencang’s thoughts and candor, I have to say that I cannot give him the rest of 821 Brigade. It is an essential part of our strategic first-strike force and is indispensable.”

  “If the plan works, we will not need that strike,” Peng reminded the commander of the 2ND Artillery Corps.

  “Believe me when I say this, comrade chairman,” Liu replied, “If General Wencang’s plan succeeds, we will need our first strike capability more than ever! The Indians will only be pushed so much before they are forced to resort to the nuclear option. And then, we will be caught flat footed!”

  Wencang leaned forward on the table again after putting his water bottle away: “Am I expected to believe that with more than two hundred missiles deployed and ready in Tibet, you still cannot guarantee a sufficient deterrent against Indian nuclear attacks? Am I hearing this right?”

  Liu’s face flushed with anger and Chen saw the danger of pushing him into a corner, but he could not visibly restrain Wencang now. They had to present a unified front else their argument would stand no chance…

  “You can hear whatever you like! I am telling you that we will be tasked to launch a crippling first strike sooner rather than later, regardless of whether we take out the Indian airfields or not!” Liu responded instantly.

  But Peng terminated the conversation: “That is quite enough! We must fight the enemy in his house, not bring it into our own!”

  As both Generals bit their anger and restrained themselves, Peng leaned back in his chair and expressed his own thoughts: “We will do whatever is necessary to ensure that China must survive. And for that to happen, we must survive. All of us, in this room must continue to maintain control to allow a sense of unity to prevail over the people outside. General Wencang, if General Liu is unable to give you control of 821 Brigade, I am sure he has his valid technical reasons as I am also sure that you will find an alternative with the resources available to our military. We have the utmost confidence in your abilities to do so. As far as Pakistan is concerned, I agree that it is time for them to enter this war. If nothing else, they will weaken our enemy and allow us to deliver a final blow to reverse the course of this war. For the queen to survive, the pawn must fall.”

  OPERATIONS CENTER

  STRATEGIC FORCES COMMAND

  INDIA

  DAY 10 + 1945 HRS

  The chaos following the attack on Tawang was not restricted to the population only. The unexpected savagery of the attack had caught the Indian military and the government by surprise as well. The army was scrambling all resources at its disposal to help out while the air-force was attempting to re-evaluate its combat potential in the east after taking severe damage to two of its major airbases, not to mention the large loss of personnel, equipment and several Su-30 fighters as well as two An-32 transports on the ground.

  On the government side, officials were attempting to allay fears from the media about the attack and India’s response to it now that the preliminary civilian casualty estimates had begun airing on the news all over the world…
>
  “This is going to force our hand,” Valhotra said as he leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head, mentally evaluating what future options existed. Iyer nodded his agreement.

  Putting aside the brutality of the attack, it was easily apparent that the goals for the attack were as much military as they were political or psychological. The attack on the town had brought out the expected public outrage all over India. It had also pushed back the army’s offensives north of Bum-La and into Tibet that Lieutenant-General Suman had been planning for his eastern army. The loss of two major airbases had crippled the IAF’s ability to maintain larger number of aircraft in the air above Arunachal Pradesh for the next day while the damage was assessed and the bases restored to operational status. And the loss of experienced personnel was a permanent blow to the IAF strength that could not be easily resuscitated except by removing personnel from bases in the south.

  But for all the tactical good it did for Beijing, the attack was still a strategic feint designed to lure India into a fight it could not hope to win. It was the modern equivalent of what the RAF Bomber Command had done during the Battle-of-Britain when they had struck civilian targets in Germany at a time when the Luftwaffe was close to eliminating the RAF Fighter Command’s ability to hold off attacks. Back then Hitler’s emotionality had played into the British hand when he changed focus from British airbases to cities, allowing the RAF to recover and ultimately to defeat the Luftwaffe. The Chinese were hoping for something similar.

  An emotional outburst that would doom India…

  They were counting on the emotions of the Indian populace and the power its citizens could bring to bear on the government to respond at a time like this. They were very much counting on an Indian response. The idea behind it was simple.

  With the PLAAF presence pushed all the way to north to Korla, Golmud, Urumqi, Chengdu and Lanzhou airbases, the skies over southern and central Tibet were in Indian hands. More to the point, given how far these airbases were from the border, there were very few options for striking back in a manner similar to what the Chinese had done.

  In order to hit the PLAAF in the way it had hit the IAF, the only options were either to use Su-30s on very deep missions into China with all the risks or conventionally armed ballistic-missiles…

  If the Indian government tasked Iyer and his SFC to arm a few precious missiles with conventional warheads for a strike, there were plenty of options across China that could be targeted with precision.

  Iyer, Valhotra and the rest of the operations staff at the SFC had spent the day figuring that out. They had also come up with a variety of strike options depending on different scenarios. But the question was whether such a strike would invite the kind of retaliation that Iyer, Valhotra and the rest of the SFC feared.

  What was the trigger for the Chinese nuclear option?

  Without knowing the answer to that, any ad-hoc response using ballistic systems was premature. Iyer thought about that as he stretched and leaned back into his chair. He checked his wristwatch and realized that he had a long night ahead of him…

  OVER NORTHERN BHUTAN

  DAY 10 + 2130 HRS

  The arrival of a second enemy airborne radar signal over the northern horizon was detected by the sensors on board the CABS AEW aircraft as it patrolled over the Tsenda Kang. The signal was processed and revealed to be that of a KJ-2000 AWACS. The PLAAF were left with four active airframes of this type in their entire force following the successful IAF operations against them in southwestern Tibet. Two of these were based out of Korla and flying patrols in rotation in order to maintain a round-the-clock presence in the skies. The two other KJ-2000s were rotating in a similar manner out of Golmud and patrolling over central Tibet. All remaining KJ-200s were to the east at Chengdu on purely defensive duties as part of an integrated air-ground defense line. As far as the war was concerned, unless the IAF ventured as far out as Chengdu, the KJ-200s operating in rotation there were of no consequence.

  The Golmud based aircraft though, were still a concern.

  The current pair of KJ-2000s over central Tibet was currently exchanging patrols over the Nam Tso. Additionally, J-11s from the 19TH Fighter Division flying out of Urumqi were keeping a much stronger presence near these aircraft after recent past experience with the IAF. Feng had ordered a virtual wall of J-11s put up around these radar aircraft for protection. But in doing so they were being strictly defensive and using up a large force of J-11s on defensive operations.

  It was yet another way of defeating an enemy air force. Why shoot their planes down when they were being forced to do other non-productive work? The point was that the IAF was not looking to defeat the PLAAF by doing a number count on aircraft losses. The idea was to defeat them in the mind and put them in the position where they could not affect IAF operations over the battlefields. That was as good as being defeated, even if they retained hundreds of their fighter aircraft after the war…

  But following the attack on Tezpur and Jorhat, both sides were staying on their own sides of the border for now. The IAF Eastern Air Command was still reeling from the losses and had pushed them to defensive operations until those two airbases were made operational again.

  So for now both the Indian and Chinese airborne radar crews in the skies above Tibet had to contend themselves with intelligence gathering…

  As the second KJ-2000 took over and the first one shut down its radars and retreated back to Golmud, the radar crew on board the Indian AEW aircraft noted the time saved the tracking history.

  The electronic-warfare operator on board, sent encrypted data to the operations center at Shillong and leaned into his seat, rubbing his bloodshot eyes. To him this process was as routine as having three meals a day, but somebody a lot senior at Shillong had probably decided that knowing the aircraft schedule for the Chinese 26TH Air Division out of Golmud was interesting. Had he not been so physically exhausted after ten days of continuous operations, he might have had a chance to think this through. They were supposed to have been on rest right now as the second crew for this aircraft took the next shift. But that other crew had been caught on the ground when Tezpur had been hit. There had been many casualties within that team.

  Unlike the handful of Phalcon AWACS, the smaller CABS aircraft were almost always being deployed on airbases closer to the frontlines because of a severe shortage of tankers. And Tezpur had been secure for the past ten days. But the surprise Chinese GLCM attack had done a lot of damage. So now there was little choice but to continue with one crew and grab whatever rest they could, when they could…

  The aircraft tilted ever so slightly as the flight-crew up front brought the aircraft on a southerly heading to refuel with an Il-78 tanker that had lifted from Kalaikunda. As the aircraft headed out of Bhutanese airspace, the only thing the operators in the cabin could think of was the two hours of sleep, strapped in their seats.

  NEW-DELHI

  DAY 10 + 2200 HRS

  “You better listen to this,” the PM said as he walked into the room along with Ravoof.

  “What happened?” Chakri said as he and the NSA put their papers aside and looked up. Chakri removed his reading glasses and put them on the table. The PM looked over to Ravoof and gestured him to speak.

  “So,” Ravoof said with quiet deliberation, “I just finished giving our first official press-conference since the Chinese attacks on Tawang this morning. The press is livid. So are the people. The conference went as bad as can be expected. All they wanted to know was how we allowed this to happen and what and when our response was going to be.”

  “And? What did you tell them?” Chakri asked.

  “What do you think? I told them that the Chinese attack was a brutal murder of civilians and completely unwarranted. Which is true,” Ravoof added his own comment to the answer. “I also told them that India reserves the right to respond but that we cannot comment on ongoing military operations.”

  “Good. That’s all we need to tell them at
the moment,” Chakri said and then leaned back into his chair, rubbing his forehead with his fingers as he focused on this new problem, having had to change gears from what he and the NSA had been discussing before the PM had barged in.

  “Good? That answer might be acceptable to the media but not to me,” the PM said, visibly angered now. “I want to know what we intend to do about this? Where is our response? And when do we expect to see it?”

  Chakri looked over to the NSA sitting nearby and got a poker-faced response. The PM caught the look and it angered him even more.

  “Don’t you dare give me that! I know both of you think I am not versed with military operations but like it or not, I am the Prime-Minister of this nation! You will tell me everything that is going on at our borders and will involve me in all military decision making processes from now on!”

  Chakri sighed and then gestured the PM to take a chair, which he refused. So Chakri continued anyway:

  “So here’s how it works. We have the Chinese beaten on the ground and in the air over Tibet. The Chumbi valley for the most part is under our control. The Chinese presence in Bhutan is becoming tenuous as General Potgam and his forces under Joint-Force-Bhutan are continuing their counter-offensives. The Chinese ground offensive in Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh has ground to a halt at heavy losses to both sides. And the Navy has begun operations to shut down the Chinese merchant shipping through the Indian Ocean region. There is still the issue of dealing with the Chinese fleet entering the southern Indian Ocean region but Admiral Surakshan has plans to deal with them. So the Chinese are reeling under all this and now intend to use the one advantage they have over us: ballistic-missiles and nuclear weapons. They have a lot more conventional and nuclear armed missiles than us and they will use them if they have to.”

  “This attack on Tawang,” Chakri continued, “savage and painful as it may be, is nothing more than the dying lashes of a snake. What they want now is for us to get into a war of missiles. And that’s a war we do not want to get into because unlike that bastard Peng and his cronies in Beijing, we don’t want to see a lot more of what happened in Tawang happening over the rest of the country.”