Chimera (16 page)

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 6
TH
Fighter Division ready for operations out of Kashgar, Urumqi and Korla airbases. The 36
TH
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 44
TH
Fighter Division in case we require them. The 26
TH
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.

Khurana’s radio squawked with the chatter between the Phalcon controllers and the other group of four Su-30s now approaching the Aksai Chin…

OVER LADAKH

DAY 1 + 1810 HRS

The new set of four Su-30s, also from No. 17 Squadron, was now heading directly for the LAC. But they were not about to go straight into the kill-zones set up by Feng with the S-300s. These four aircraft were armed for a very specific job. And as such, they were not even going to enter the kill-zones over the Aksai Chin.

Each aircraft was armed with a single Brahmos Block-I ALCM under their fuselage pylon specially modified for this role. The four aircraft were spread out in line abreast formation and were barely a thousand feet above the peaks of the Ladakh Mountains below as they streaked towards the border. Just beyond the Chinese fuzzy detection range of the S-300 radars, the aircrafts accelerated to very high subsonic speeds and punched off their deadly cargo. The long tube shaped missiles fell cleanly off the four aircraft and ignited their motors…

By this time the four aircraft were already pulling tight pitch-out man oeuvres and headed back out of the Chinese radar detection.

The targeting information had been fed to the missile on-board flight computers before the aircraft had left the airbase at Pathankot. And they had been launched from one-hundred-fifty kilometers out, allowing for a time-to-target of around two minutes. The four missiles streaked across the Ladakh peaks with a massive shockwave thunderclap following in their wake…

They were detected immediately after release by the Chinese radars in the Aksai Chin and multiple S-300 systems engaged the four inbound missiles. Even with the phenomenal speeds and low reaction times involved, the S-300 proved to be a worthy opponent. These systems had been placed east of the highway through the Aksai Chin only because of the clear line of sight the plains provided to the defenders. Feng had done his homework.

Once the Brahmos missiles cleared the peaks between Galwan River to the north and Mobdi-la peaks to the south, they had entered relatively clear terrain in full view of these deadly defenses. With more than a dozen interceptor missiles targeting the four inbound Brahmos missiles, losses were inevitable…

Two of the four Brahmos missiles were destroyed by several interceptor missile hits. The remaining two, however, streaked past the defenses and slammed into two Big-Bird radar systems for an S-300 battery in the central sector. The result explosions destroyed both radar systems completely, shutting down the anti-missile radar capability for that sector of the highway. But Feng had designed the system to be robust and had included overlap with other nearby batteries and redundant auxiliary radar systems that went active minutes after the primary ones went down.  

Back on board the Phalcon, Verma noted that there had been a temporary shutdown of radar activity in the central sector of the Aksai Chin. But several minutes later it had closed up again as new radar sources coming online were tagged by the onboard EW sensors.

Unless the coverage of this network of air-defenses was reduced permanently, the IAF Jaguar strike aircraft Squadrons could not dare penetrate the Aksai Chin region to take out the PLA targets nor could other fighters go north and take the fight to the PLAAF. This tickle of the Chinese air-defenses had confirmed for the WAC operations staff that they were now facing a highly integrated air-ground defense system. And unless it was taken out, the Chinese possessed the initiative in the skies over Ladakh.