by Vivek Ahuja
This will get over soon enough… Wencang thought.
One way or another.
NEW-DELHI
INDIA
DAY 14 + 1830 HRS
“They want to do what?” Chakri said into his phone from his office.
“You heard me the first time,” Ravoof said calmly from his office in the external affairs ministry. “I can’t believe it either. But I just got off the phone with Tiwari in Moscow. Bogdanov called him up to say that Beijing wants to initiate some ‘lower-level’ conversations to try and end this mess. The Russians seem to think they are sincere about it this time.”
“As they damn well should be!” Chakri noted with a smile. “We have them defeated out there in the Chumbi valley. And this confirms that they know it!”
“So how do we want to proceed on this?” Ravoof asked, unable to conceal his excitement. “I am going to be briefing the P-M in an hour once Tiwari has more details for me. But I thought I will give you a heads up on what that meeting is going to be about.”
“Thank you,” Chakri said. He appreciated the heads-up. He knew he needed time to digest this before heading over to meet the NSA and then the Prime-Minister.
“Ravoof,” he said after a few seconds, “let’s keep this low for now. We don’t want the media gaining even a whiff of this until we know what we are getting into. We don’t want this leaking out to the world just yet. Beijing might be forced to backtrack into their hole if they are publicly humiliated with this news. I can only imagine what is happening in Beijing right now and how delicate the deal might be from their end.”
“I agree,” Ravoof said.
“I am also putting a call to the service chiefs to see what they have to say about this,” Chakri concluded and terminated the call with the Foreign-Minister. He was already lost in thought as he put down the phone.
What on earth would we even talk about with Beijing?
KOLKATA
DAY 14 + 2200 HRS
Lieutenant-General Suman yawned for what seemed to him like the thousandth time. Unlike all other wars that India had fought in nearly seventy years, this war had been truly waged on a near continuous level over the last two weeks. With little or no time for rest and always on the move for fear of Chinese missile attacks, Suman was realizing the limits of his own body’s endurance.
But for all that, his corner of the war was going well.
The XXXIII Corps had broken the PLA 55TH Division in the southern part of the valley into several isolated segments as operation Chimera entered its final phases. The PLA 11TH Division had been pushed away from its sister force and was now effectively separated by the full force of the 2ND Mountain Division in between them. And north of the 11TH were the two Indian airborne battalions under Colonel Thomas.
The 2ND Mountain Division brigades had moved west to east from Sikkim and one of its battalions had even reached the eastern slopes of the Chomolhari on the Bhutanese border. There they had been met by a small recon group from Potgam’s Joint-Force-Bhutan. That had effectively sealed the fate for the PLA 55TH Division.
With each passing hour the soldiers in that unfortunate unit were being pummeled with heavy artillery. The 55TH Division had now been reduced to a few thousand battered men in small groups surrounded from all sides.
As we were once, sixty years ago…
Suman clenched his fists and broke the pencil in his hand in two as he thought about that. He and most other senior officers were old enough to remember growing up as kids learning of the defeat at Namka Chu and the Chip-Chap river valley back in 1962. More than fifty years later, there was little in the way of sympathy that Suman could now bring to bear.
He leaned back in his chair, exhaled and tried to close his eyes for a brief moment of rest.
Five minutes. Just five minutes! He told himself as his eyelids became heavy. The door to his office slammed open as his staff officers walked in. He immediately awakened and watched with bloodshot eyes as his Deputy-Army Commander walked in front of the other officers.
“What the hell is this? What happened?” Suman asked worriedly.
“So the chaps up in the 71ST Mountain heard this over their comms,” the Lieutenant-General handed Suman a print-out with a smile. Suman took it and glanced over the usual comms security data down to the relevant part:
“To the Indian field commander, we hereby accept your offer to surrender honorably under the following conditions. Firstly, my officers and soldiers are to be treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. Secondly, my wounded are to be provided medical attention and our medical convoys are to be allowed passage. If these conditions are met, then given the incapacitated state of the division commander, I am authorized to surrender what remains of my force within the valley. This channel may be used to communicate with me and my staff directly. -deputy commander, 55TH Division, People’s Liberation Army”
Suman grunted and then looked up at the smiling officers in the room around him.
“Well then, I think we should tell our boys to go ahead to accept the good General’s offer right away, don’t you think?”
MINISTRY OF NATIONAL DEFENSE BUILDING
BEIJING
DAY 14 + 2330 HRS
“They did what?” General Liu thundered and stood up from his chair hard enough to trip it over behind him. As the chair fell with a thud, it froze everybody in the room while Dianrong moved to pick it up. General Yongju, who had just announced to the room what he had heard from his Chengdu region commander regarding the surrender of the 55TH Division, stood where he was with the paper in his hand. He was visibly shaken by Liu’s thunderous response.
“General Liu,” Peng started to say, but Liu cut him off:
“They surrendered? They surrendered to the Indians? How dare they?!”
“The deputy-commander did what was in the interest of saving the lives of the men still alive,” Yongju replied,
“That was not his call to make!” Liu shouted loud enough so that the room echoed his voice a bit. “He has singlehandedly brought shame to this country through his actions!”
To that Liu received silence in the room and as he looked around, none of the army commanders met his gaze. He saw defeat in their eyes and in his own stomach he felt a pit of rage…
“We need to negotiate an end to this war as soon as possible!” the Foreign-Minister added urgently.
“No!” Liu shouted. “We will do what we should have done a long time back!” He looked over to Dianrong, standing by the wall behind his seat.
“Colonel Dianrong! Get me the commanders for the Tibet based DF-21 Brigades right now!”
“General, what are you doing?” Peng shouted at Liu as Dianrong picked up the phone on a table nearby. Liu turned away from the Colonel to look Peng straight in the face:
“Making sure that the Indians are not able to enjoy this moment of glory that you all have handed them on a silver platter! I will finish what you all could not!”
day 15
BANGALORE
INDIA
DAY 15 + 0430 HRS
“What the hell?” the Group-Captain said as the live-SAR feed of a Chinese DF-21C medium-range ballistic-missile battery in northern Tibet on the wall screens was replaced with flickering static.
Air-Vice-Marshal Malhotra looked up from the papers he was reviewing inside the glass-walled conference room. He didn’t hear the Group-Captain as the glass was sound-proofed, but he did see the sudden loss in video feed. He opened the glass door of the room and the low-volume conversations between the operators reached his ears.
“What happened?” he asked the Group-Captain.
“Not sure, sir,” the officer replied. “We just lost RISAT-2 feed over 823RD Brigade A-O.”
“Checked with ground-control?” Malhotra asked as he watched the wall-screen static replaced with a 2D map projection of the globe with orbits of various Indian and Chinese satellites marked over it.
“Doing that now,” the Group-Captain said as he
picked up the phone near where he was standing.
Malhotra knew what this was even as he waited for confirmation.
When the war had started two weeks ago, one of the major questions in the minds of the operators at the Indian Aerospace Command in Bangalore was the threat posed to Indian satellites by Chinese Anti-Satellite or ASAT weapons. These KT-xx series missiles were modified older-model DF-21 ballistic-missiles designed to hit satellites directly, referred to as kinetic-strike. But Chinese ASAT capabilities were as enigmatic as they were doubtful. A lot of their research and development into this genre of weapons was based around American and Soviet technologies. But even so, they still did not have the true ASAT capabilities. The KT-xx systems required very accurate information of the target satellite’s orbit and flyover schedules. As such, if the enemy kept changing these regularly and erratically, there was little that these weapons could do to intercept them successfully.
But on the Indian side, satellite coverage over mainland China and Tibet was essential for wartime operations and intelligence gathering on Chinese intentions. They had to be used.
The few Indian civilian satellites that had remote-sensing capabilities had been loaned from ISRO to the Aerospace Command. The latter currently operated only the RISAT-2 radar-imaging-satellite and had partial control over RISAT-1 along with ISRO when the war had started. Since then, ISRO had loaned its CARTOSAT series satellites to expand operational capabilities.
During the last two weeks, these satellites had been orbiting continually over mainland China and were always under threat of ASAT attacks. But a stroke of luck had benefitted the Indian side which Malhotra had understood very early on. Because there were few satellites on hand and far larger areas to cover in Tibet, China, the Himalayan mountains and the Indian Ocean, satellite tasking varied hour-to-hour, day-to-day. And so orbits shifted daily to accommodate these missions. And that had denied the Chinese ASAT systems the orbit stability they needed.
Of course, that had changed as the momentum of conventional war had changed hands from China to India and the threat of nuclear-tipped ballistic-missiles increased. Now the focus of these satellites and the Aerospace Command had reduced to smaller and smaller regions around the 2ND Artillery Corps units deployed in northern Tibet.
And that had made their RISAT orbits predictable and regular…
Malhotra crossed his arms and turned to see the Group-Captain as he put down the phone with the ISRO satellite-operations center.
“They took it out, didn’t they?” he asked.
“Sounds like it, sir. Looks like we just got the first wartime demonstration of Chinese ASAT capabilities!”
“Better tell the chaps at the SFC that we just lost our coverage over the Chinese DF-21s in northern Tibet until we can re-task RISAT-1 from the Lhasa front.” Malhotra ordered and the Group-Captain nodded and picked up the phone again.
Of course, that means that we won’t have continuous coverage on the PLA 15TH Corps in southern Tibet… Malhotra realized.
There just weren’t enough Indian military satellites to go around. And it was no more apparent today than ever before. The loss of even one satellite was enough to tear a big hole within the Indian coverage of the Chinese ballistic-missile sites in northern Tibet…
OVER CENTRAL TIBET
DAY 15 + 0500 HRS
For all the chaos it created in Bangalore, the loss of the radar-imaging satellite did not cripple Indian coverage over the Chinese ballistic-missile sites as much as General Liu and his officers had anticipated.
The loss of battlefield control by the PLAAF had a lot of far-reaching cascading effects, some of which were lost on the Chinese due to careful Indian planning. And so while the ASAT attack had shocked the Indian Aerospace Command and crippled a section of their capability, it did not affect the Indian SFC as it might have done if the PLAAF still had control over the Tibetan skies…
For the past few days the long-range, long-endurance Herons of the IAF had been flying lonely, isolated missions over central Tibet in support of the SFC. They were filling coverage gaps and helping maintain a minimal level visual contact on the enemy.
When the RISAT-2 satellite was smashed in orbit above the 823RD Brigade launchers, the loss in video-feed at the SFC had been partial, unlike in Bangalore. The nearest Heron had been diverted on orders from Air-Marshal Iyer and had arrived on station, far-south of the battery and outside the range of its medium-range SAMs in order to maintain long, oblique visual angles for its EO systems. That way, it stayed out of harm’s way while still able to monitor activities at the southernmost battery of the Brigade. The Chinese had no knowledge of this bird and so when they began rolling out the DF-21C launchers from their camouflaged locations for pre-launch preparations, they had no intelligence that Iyer and his staff at the SFC had a clear view of the Chinese intentions…
OPERATIONS CENTER
STRATEGIC FORCES COMMAND
INDIA
DAY 15 + 0520 HRS
“Oh my god! Are you serious?” the Prime-Minister’s voice came over the conference view on the wall.
“I wish I wasn’t!” Iyer replied urgently. “It’s clear as day, sir! We can see them preparing the launchers. The nettings are gone and the vehicles are preparing to move to their launch positions!”
“What targets are we expecting them to aim for?” Chakri asked as he joined the conversation. “I mean, we are talking about their DF-21s, right?”
“We are.” Iyer agreed. “The ‘C’ models to be exact. From where they are between Korla and Golmud, they can hit any target within an arc of fifteen-hundred kilometers. To give you an idea, we are talking about all states from Ladakh, down to Delhi, Uttar-Pradesh, Bihar, Sikkim, Assam and most other eastern states. But we don’t see any activity at their DF-31 sites. The 31s are what they would need in order to hit our southern cities such as Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and so on.”
“So it’s possible they are going for a battlefield use at this time? Not our cities?” the PM asked, his voice cracking under the fear.
“It is possible,” Iyer said. “But they can hit Delhi, as I mentioned earlier!”
“Iyer, are we talking nuclear warheads here?” Chakri asked. “I want to be clear on this!” Just then the NSA and other military officials joined the video feed and the screen split into smaller sections to accommodate them.
“Yes sir,” Iyer continued as Vice-Admiral Valhotra coordinated with the other officers in the operations center. “We are almost certain that their DF-21Cs are nuclear-tipped. Their short-range missiles are not. Many of these units were hit and destroyed on the ground by our air-force strikes once we established control of the skies over southern Tibet. Beijing pulled the surviving launchers to the north where we can’t touch them. But it also means that unless we start driving deep into Tibet, those shorter-range missiles are not our primary concern at this point. The DF-21s, however, are very much the weapon of choice for Beijing right now.”
“Oh my god!” the PM added as he rubbed his eyes.
“Why are they doing this?” Ravoof asked, completely lost on Chinese intentions. “We just initiated conversations with Beijing to negotiate an end to the war! Where did this threat suddenly come from?”
“I will tell you where it came from,” Chakri sighed. “One of their Divisions in the Chumbi valley just surrendered to us! The other one there isn’t far behind. And General Potgam and his Joint-Force-Bhutan just killed the Highland Division headquarters in northern Bhutan.”
“So this whole thing is a loss-of-face issue for Beijing?” the PM asked.
“It would very much be in their character,” Chakri replied.
“So what the hell do we do now?” Ravoof asked as he absorbed the severity of the situation.
“Air-Marshal Iyer? Our options?” Chakri asked the SFC commander.
OVER NORTHERN TIBET
DAY 15 + 0600 HRS
“Come on! Hurry!”
The operators watching the feed from
the Heron’s electro-optical pod could hear their hearts beating in their chests as they watched the infra-red view of a DF-21C missile launcher elevating its deadly cannisterized cargo. Their view showed white-coloration regions near the engine and the hydraulic pumps of the launcher as they glowed hot in the IR spectrum. Other sections of the vehicle were lighter shades of gray and the freezing grounds nearby were dark gray or black.
The top cover of the large-diameter tube opened up. The UAV operators saw the crews clearing out. The body language of the Chinese crews around that launcher suggested they knew they had time.
They didn’t.
The Heron’s EO screen showed a small black cone swipe across the screen and slam into the ground a few dozen meters away from the vehicle. The screen flared white and the post-processing software at the Heron’s flight-control center adjusted coloration to show a white ball of flame expanding over that location and lifting off the ground as it disappeared. It left behind a small mushroom-shaped cloud expanding over that location even as the destroyed launcher vehicle rolled on the smoke-filled terrain shedding large chunks of its body…
“Kaboom!” the EO operator shouted.
“More flare-outs to the east!” the Heron pilot shouted as his own flight-control screen flickered. “God damn it! Bring your eyeball over east!”
“Yeah, Wilco!” the EO operator replied.
As the EO pod rotated about two axes under the Heron and the view changed, they could see more smoke clouds rising into the sky all over the region as Indian Agni-I and Agni-II ballistic-missiles slammed in quick sequences into the Chinese DF-21C launch sites. All of it was so silent and serene on the screens of the Heron as they zoomed back the EO view to show the entire region from forty-thousand feet…