Chimera (30 page)

In between them and the inbound Su-27s was No. 8 ‘
Pursoots
’ Squadron and its gaggle of Su-30s. They were moving northeast and were near Tezpur.

To the east the dogfight around Chabua was ending at heavy cost to both sides. The last two surviving J-7s made a run for home but lost out when their fuel ran out near the Chaukan pass. Their ejections were noted on the radar screens aboard CABS AEW aircraft…

“Our boys near Chabua are checking in…” the radar controller announced and then waited as information piled on both in his headsets from the surviving pilots as well as the radar returns.

“…Seven survivors. All of them diverting to Chabua. Two of them declaring fuel emergency,” he said after a minute.

“Okay. Get them to Chabua to rearm and reload. We may need them again pretty soon,” the mission-controller ordered.

“Roger.”

“The Pursoots have engaged!” the other operator announced.

The eight Su-30 pilots fired sixteen R-77s at the inbound Su-27s over the snowcapped Se-La just as the last rays of sunlight illuminated the peaks below. The missiles arced into the darkening night sky and disappeared from view. The Indian flight-crews lowered their helmet-mounted NVGs and adjusted themselves in their cockpit seats.

But the Chinese Su-27 pilots were also spoiling for a fight.

The Chinese response was quick and the Su-27 pilots fired a barrage of PJ-12s and immediately broke formation, dropping chaff all over the sky whilst diving for the safety of the peaks below. A few seconds later five Su-27s were blown out of the skies above Arunachal Pradesh by the volley of R-77s. Two Su-30s were also knocked out by the PJ-12s. But the odds had been evened and now it was to be a knife fight within the Great Himalayan Mountains...

CHABUA AIRBASE

EASTERN ASSAM

DAY 3 + 1743 HRS

Two of the five remaining Mig-21 Bisons in Assam were on open tarmac at the airbase as airmen were attaching drop-tanks on the inner pylons and a single R-77 on one of the outer pylons on each aircraft. The corresponding pylon on the other wing was loaded with an external electronic-warfare pod. The pilots were still strapped into their cockpits as the crew-chief was leaning over their shoulders with bottles of water to drink. It was essentially like an F-1 racecar pit-crew.

It had to be. Especially when turnarounds on returning aircraft were the key to operations.

A few minutes later the crew-chief slapped on the pilot helmets and closed the cockpit glass behind them. Others on the ground visually inspected the new load-out and showed a thumbs-up to the two pilots who nodded. Seconds later the two aircraft began rolling towards the runway...

Two minutes later two Mig-21s were climbing steadily over the foothills of the Great Himalayan peaks as they headed northeast, away from the raging dogfight between Indian and Chinese Sukhois to the west. The pilots checked fuel usage: they were using up the external fuel tanks first...

By this time the skies to the east were a shade of dark blue. The silhouettes of the mountains were still visible with their western slopes lit by the fading reddish light.

Like the Sukhoi pilots, these pilots also lowered his helmet mounted NVGs and changed the visceral colors in front of them into a greenish-black hell-scape. The stars suddenly became visible almost as if they were lights that had been switched on. The Himalayan mountains were blanketed in light green coloration now…

The two Mig-21s were burning the external fuel fast as they built up speed and altitude. The HUD showed all the required statistics.

The external fuel tankage indicators were on their way down. A minute later the two Mig-21s reached twenty-five thousand feet altitude and the pilots brought their aircrafts down to zero climb-angle. But the afterburners were still on and the acceleration was high.

Several minutes later the external fuel tanks were dry and the aircraft were cruising at very high subsonic velocities. That was when the pilots flipped over a switch to separate the source of unnecessary drag and four empty drop-tanks punched off their pylons and separated into the slipstream behind.

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 26
TH
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 33
RD
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 33
RD
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 for 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.