Chimera (59 page)

“Yes sir,” Li responded with some hesitation.

“Good,” Feng continued.

Li saluted and Feng returned it. As Li brisk-walked down the corridors and disappeared, Feng walked slower and headed to his office. He reached for the doors, sighed and walked inside.

OVER GILGIT

PAKISTAN OCCUPIED KASHMIR

DAY 8 + 2130 HRS

The rumble of the turboprop engines reverberated through the cockpits as the flight-crew checked their instrumentations. The pilot had his hands on the control and was looking through the cockpit glass via his helmet-mounted night-vision goggles. The low-light optics was not really required as the aircraft was fully equipped for instrument flight. And at these altitudes, there was no chance of terrain collision. But the pilot was interested in the skies around them for other reasons. And as the aircraft flew south-east to their orbiting location one-hundred kilometers north of the peaks at Kargil, the skies were alive with danger…

The greenish-black view from his optics showed a flight of four F-16s calmly overtaking his aircraft two thousand feet above him in a loose finger-four formation. He could make out the black silhouettes of the four aircraft against the moonlight.

These were the escorts.

The pilot now turned his attention back to the front and saw no other aircraft. But that was very deceptive.

As the PAF ‘
Karakoram-Eagle
’ AEW aircraft moved into its AO close to the Line-of-Control with India, the radar and mission crews in the back of the aircraft began their job and started developing a radar picture of the Indian aerial warfare capabilities over Ladakh.

Pakistan had yet to engage in direct confrontation with Indian forces as the war with China raged on. But that by no means was a result of any hesitation on the part of the Pakistanis. The real issue was how to seamlessly integrate their capabilities into the Chinese operational plans. It was not as easy as it sounded. Not an easy task under any circumstances.

But that did not mean that nothing could be accomplished from Pakistani assets. Far from it. The advantage for the PLAAF commanders was that they were major suppliers for the PAF in terms of equipment. The JF-17s, FC-20s and the ZDK-03 aircraft came directly from China. And so there was a significant commonality of operating systems and avionics, even though Pakistan had gone ahead and integrated several western systems into each aircraft type.

For the present situation, the ZDK-03 ‘
Karakoram Eagle
’ AEW aircraft, with its airborne radar mounted on the heavily modified Z-8 turboprop transport, itself a reverse-engineered Russian An-12 aircraft, was a crucial game changer for the PLAAF over Ladakh…

Ever since the IAF had taken control of the skies over Ladakh and southern Tibet, the PLAAF had been forced to pull back their airborne radar aircraft to safer distances to the north. Moving these critical ISR aircraft further away from Indian airspace meant that they no longer had a clear idea of what the Indians were up to over the Ladakh skies.

And that was not desirable because it meant that the gathering of Indian aircraft southwest of Leh was no longer visible to the PLAAF except for the intercepted long-wavelength radar emissions of the Indian Phalcon AWACS. They could triangulate the patrol areas of the Phalcon and the CABS AEWs on the Indian side through their electronic emissions but had no clue where the fighter/tanker concentrations at any given time were unless the Indian fighters flew northeast into southern Tibet on offensive fighter sweeps or strike missions. This gave very little reaction time to the PLAAF air-defenses and ultimately handed the Indians the combat initiative on a silver platter.

And that was where the Pakistanis came into the picture.

The PAF had now deployed two of its AEW aircraft to Gilgit. Their job was to utilize Pakistan’s neutral stance between Indian and Pakistan to full advantage for Beijing. The current aircraft was flying within a hundred kilometers north of Kargil. In doing so, the Pakistani airborne radar was snooping deep inside Indian airspace over Ladakh and Kashmir. It could now see on radar dozens of Indian fighters, helicopters and transports flying all over the region. All of which was now being shared over secure datalinks with the PLAAF 26
TH
Air Division KJ-2000 AWACS over the Taklimakan desert…

UDHAMPUR

INDIA

DAY 8 + 2145 HRS

“Are they poised to engage?”

Bhosale asked his operations commanders at the operations center for the Western Air Command. Verma on board the Phalcon AWACS from the No. 50 Squadron above southern Ladakh was on the comms with the center.

“Negative, sir,” Verma replied. “They are set snooping on us. We count four escort birds high above them waiting to sweep in on any potential threats, but they are deployed purely defensively. No offensive capabilities on display.”

“So far,” Bhosale added.

“Indeed, sir. But they are watching everything in the air north of Jammu,” Verma concluded.

“And we can bet the farm that they are feeding everything they are seeing back to General Chen and his commanders in Chengdu!” Bhosale said. He was looking intently at the live wall-mounted digital screen showing Kashmir with aircraft dispositions of India, China and Pakistan visible on it.

“That’s affirmative, sir,” Verma’s voice came over the speaker in the operations room. “E-S-M suggests it is one of their Chinese-built Z-D-K-Threes.” 

Of course. That makes sense. Those bastards!

Bhosale rubbed his hands over his lips as he considered his options before making his decision:

“
Fine!
Let the Pakis look and share to their heart’s content. What
I
want is a flight of eight Su-30s deployed just south of Kargil. I don’t care if you have them leaning over into Pakistani occupied airspace, but I want the message sent to the Pakis right now that if they make one wrong move, we will knock them out of the skies in a heartbeat! And I want to proceed with operation Pivot-Strike as we had planned. If the Chinese see us coming then so be it. It won’t help them much anyway. Understood?”

“
Wilco!
Executing operation Pivot-Strike
as
planned! Eagle-Eye-One has the ball!”

ABOVE SHYOK

LADAKH

DAY 8 + 2200 HRS

As Pivot-Strike unfolded, and Eagle-Eye-One initiated operations over Ladakh, a large force of sixteen Su-30s from No. 220 ‘
Desert Tigers
’ Squadron in two line-abreast formations of eight aircraft each switched on their afterburners and accelerated northeast of Leh, heading straight over what used to be Chinese S-300 dominated skies above the Aksai chin and beyond…

OVER THE TAKLIMAKAN DESERT

TIBET

DAY 8 + 2205 HRS

For the first time in this war for the crew of the 26
TH
Air Division kj-2000 AWACS, orders came down to shut down the radar and to egress from its patrol area on emergency.

The sixteen Desert-Tigers Su-30s had gone supersonic just over the Aksai Chin and were now charging at this Chinese aircraft and its crew. In response, Feng had just ordered all available Chinese fighters in the area to respond and protect their precious airborne-radar aircraft at all costs. Time was of the essence when one considers that the Indian fighters were travelling one kilometer every two seconds towards their target! And they only needed to get into the successful engagement envelope for their long-range air-to-air missiles…

The pilots of the Chinese AWACS heard the orders from the operations center at Kashgar and immediately realized the severity of the situation. The pilot, a PLAAF Lieutenant-Colonel, immediately muttered a curse and began disabling the autopilot as his right hand reached the throttle controls of the four turbojet engines and pushed them to maximum settings.

The aircraft reverberated under the sudden strain of the thrust and the engine noise spooled up dramatically. At the same time the mission crew in the back were switching off their comms and fastening their seatbelts. They were hearing the urgent communications from the cockpit over the radio as the pilots brought the lumbering aircraft into a turn and banked to the side to bring them on a northerly escape vector back to Korla airbase, about six-hundred kilometers to the northeast.

As the aircraft banked away, the six J-11s escorts left the aircraft and went full afterburner to meet the Indian threat head-on and buy time for their precious AWACS to escape. The six fighters went active on their radars just around the same time the Indian aircraft did.

The latter were also out of their airborne-radar coverage areas: the No. 50 Squadron Phalcon pilots had no intention of going behind the Su-30s in order to extend the radar cover. It was far too dangerous for the rewards it merited.

No. The Su-30 drivers were on their own from now on.

At Kashgar, Feng understood exactly what the Indians were after and he had no intention of giving it over to them without a fight. He picked up the phone and immediately ordered the scramble of all available J-7s of the 17
TH
Air Regiment at Kashgar and also ordered Major Li to get the 19
TH
Division to scramble all available J-11 detachments that had already arrived at Urumqi airbase north of Korla. He also ordered the release of operational control on those fighters from 19
TH
Division HQ over to his command at Kashgar.

These J-11s, although too far north to join the immediate fight, would move south and bring the retreating AWACS bird under their protection and escort it back to the landing pattern at Korla. He also ordered the ingress of more H-6 tankers from Wulumuqi airbase north of Urumqi to refuel the inevitable fuel-hungry fighters over the Taklimakan desert…

Klaxons sounded off at all concerned Chinese airbases.

The first to respond was the 17
TH
Air Regiment pilots already in the cockpits of their J-7s on the tarmac at Kashgar. They were airborne in under a minute as the rest of the Regiment pilots and ground-crews ran in all directions to get the rest of the aircraft in the air…

Back in the skies above Hotien, the commander for the No. 220 Squadron ordered his two groups to spread out east and west of the incoming J-11s. He had every intention of forcing the Chinese flight-leader to either engage one of the two sweeping groups of Indian Su-30s or engage both after splitting his already outnumbered force even more.

Either way, six Su-27 knockoffs against
sixteen
Indian Su-30MKIs was by no means a fair fight. And the Indian commander didn’t really have to try any fancy tactics. But he knew that
every
PLAAF airbase in western China would be scrambling
every
single fighter they had to prevent the Indians from taking down their AWACS. And so he had to deal with his primary objectives quickly…

After a tense few moments the response from the J-11 pilots became visible and the six J-11s split into two groups of three and engaged.

A few seconds later the RWRs on both sides screeched to indicate the release of air-to-air weapons. The J-11s were launching PJ-12 missiles and the Indians had let loose a barrage of R-77s, two per aircraft.

There was no hope for the six Chinese pilots faced with
thirty-two
missiles headed towards them from
sixteen
launch platforms.

There was no place to run and nothing to hide behind over the flat desert below.

All six J-11 pilots flipped their Flankers to the side and punched out load after load of chaff and even flares in desperation. Their low-light optics spotted smoke trails from the barrage of R-77s crisscrossing the horizon in front of them like a spider web…

All six J-11s were blotted out in loud whumps as salvo after salvo of R-77 continued to slam into the disintegrating airframes. At least a dozen missiles veered off course into the night sky, chasing imaginary chaff targets once the aircraft had disintegrated into shards of metal.

On the Indian side the pilots were very clearly briefed about this. All fighters that were seeing the incoming Chinese missiles heading for them on their radars were authorized to break formation and evade.

Others were to punch afterburners and accelerate beyond this battlefield in order to chase down their primary target.

As far as the inbound missiles were concerned, there were a lot of them. The Chinese pilots had fired multiple salvos from each aircraft in their hopes of taking down at least a few, if not more of the enemy. Of the sixteen Indian Sukhois, eleven broke formation and dived for the ground, releasing chaff and activating onboard ECMs as they headed for the desert floor below on full afterburner.

The remaining five Su-30s punched afterburners and went supersonic as they spotted the receding signature of the Chinese KJ-2000 on the edge of their radar coverage…