by Vivek Ahuja
It took a second for Khurana to find his bearings. He had lost situational awareness in the time he had been flying between the peaks below to evade the Chinese air-to-air missile. That was not good and he knew it. He had lost sight of his other pilots and right now there was no one to his left or right. And the skies were still dangerous. His RWR was still tracking the radar emissions from the four Su-27s to the north. His onboard electronics also detected friendly airborne radar to the south. But there were no friendly fighters around for some reason.
Damn…
But as he began to recollect his bearings, this fact did not surprise him as it had a few seconds before. Unlike the Chinese Su-27s acting aggressive with active onboard radars, the Indian Su-30s were running in a blackout mode to the south, and somehow that seemed more deadly and reassuring to Khurana despite the opinion of his RWR. At the moment his first priority was to find out where his other squadron pilots were and what had happened to them. In that instant the radio jerked back to life with dozens of different voices simultaneously filling the skies:
“Claw-One, this is -two! Declaring emergency! I have taken a hit!”
“This is Claw-Three. I have a lock on November-two-four. Engaging!”
“This is Eagle-Eye-One to Claw-Flight. You are not authorized to engage! What the hell is going on over there? Over!”
This is getting out of control...Khurana thought as he began to orient himself in the three-dimensional skies around him. The Chinese J-10 pilot had misread the tense situation and had bungled up. But now it was going downhill. One Indian fulcrum had taken a hit from a Chinese air-to-air missile while another was about to take down the Chinese J-10 in retaliation but without clear orders to do so. Emotions in combat could be very disruptive, as he knew. And right now both sides were displaying their fair share of it…
A bigger danger remained beyond the Chinese J-10. Four more Su-27s were bearing down from the north while a dozen more Indian fighters were now being vectored to the area by the Phalcon airborne controllers. It was time for him to bring things under control. He switched his comms:
“Claw-Three, this is -One. Do not engage! Repeat, do not engage!”
“Claw-One, this is -Three. We have already been engaged! I have the bugger locked on a single R-77 over here. Requesting permission to bring that son of a bitch down! Over!”
That’s tempting...Khurana thought. But he also knew that if that Indian Mig-29 took down the J-10 then the four Su-27s would return the favor with a volley of their own BVR missiles against that offending Indian aircraft. And it would be for nothing: they were not at war.
Yet.
Besides, Khurana knew it was all a huge mistake. He was not going to be responsible for giving the Chinese a reason to start one. Not without proper authorization, anyway…
“Negative, -Three. Do not engage! Break contact and return to formation. Claw-Two is hit and needs assistance back to base. Standby,” he changed frequencies: “Eagle-Eye-One, this is Claw-One. Claw-Three has taken a hit from a Chinese missile but is still aloft. Barely. Claw-Two has the enemy J-10 locked on and ready to engage. I need authorization to engage or I am ordering my flight to break contact right away before this thing snowballs on us! Over.”
On board the Phalcon to the south, the airborne-controller looked back at Verma who in turn clenched his fists in anger at what had happened but was also professional enough to realize the huge mistake it all was. A few seconds later Khurana got his response:
“Copy, Claw-One. Assist the crippled bird back to base. We have Su-30s entering the airspace now and will establish BARCAP between you and the Su-27s. Good luck. Over and out.”
By this time Khurana had taken up position alongside Claw-Two as they made way back to Leh. Khurana turned his head to see the damage and came away with mixed feelings. The port side of the aircraft had been shredded. The port wing trailing edge control surfaces had been destroyed. The port side dorsal fuselage area panels had been blown away but luckily the engine was still apparently running. The port vertical stabilizer was also two-third the size it should have been. And one weapon pylon with its R-77 payload on the port side was missing. It was not pretty, but the damage was repairable.
In a few months, perhaps...Khurana thought to himself as he realized that this particular aircraft was going to go off the No. 28 Squadron’s order-of-battle as soon as it came to a stop on the runway. But most importantly the pilot was still alive and unhurt. That in of itself seemed like a miracle considering the shape the aircraft was in. Khurana radioed to him the results of his visual inspection of the aircraft even as Leh airbase control tower finally checked in on the comms. Khurana was equally relieved to see his third aircraft return from the north a few minutes later and line up alongside with all his R-77s still attached.
AIRSPACE OVER SOUTHWESTERN TIBET
TIBET
MAY 15, 2120 HRS
As the Indian Phalcon crew under command of Verma were bringing the situation under control on their side, to the north Feng was also in full action as he tried to determine what had gone wrong.
“Order all Su-27s to shut down their radars and order them to pull back to the north right away,” Feng barked his orders to the airborne control officer.
Feng walked over to the single porthole to see the dark starlit skies outside. He knew he would have to answer for this. Pushing the situation was all right when done within limits. Out here, the situation had deteriorated severely and always the thinking officer, Feng had adapted. He knew that the J-10 pilot had panicked and bungled. He knew the Indians had evaded the missiles and were making their way back to base. But for all that they had restrained themselves. He was obliged to do the same. This was not a time to push the Indians.
At least not when all I have are just four Su-27s on hand...
But that was not to say that lessons had not been learned in the tense half hour. One of the things that had alarmed him was the speed of the Indian response. Within minutes of the missiles being fired, his radar controllers had detected multiple flights of Su-30s entering the airspace against his four on-station Su-27s. The Indians had laid claim to these skies, and it worried Feng that those sitting at the Junwei-Kong-Jun did not realize the level of the threat this kind of force posed to the PLAAF units in the region. He realized that the only way he was going to be able to accomplish the task of reasserting the PLAAF presence in these skies would be when he had a much larger force at his disposal.
He sighed at that prospect. He knew exactly what General Jinping was going to say. Worse, Major-General Zhigao would exude supreme yet naïve confidence when presented with the question of reinforcements for his 6TH Fighter Division. Small man that he was, he would make it a case for his personal ego and honor. And in doing so he would cripple any efforts by Chen and Feng to streamline the PLAAF combat units in the region. The Su-27UBKs and the J-11s in Lanzhou region were deployed under Zhigao for now. And he held very little regard in Lieutenant-General Chen’s and Senior-Colonel Feng’s eyes for his competence.
Zhigao was a man typical of the many senior officers in the PLAAF who lacked the competence required of good, competent leaders and who had instead spent the majority of their careers milking the vast military-industrial complex in China for personal gains. Corruption within the Chinese military was not new. Neither was the knowledge that none of these older commanders had ever faced combat against a professional enemy. The Indian Air-Force was formidable and flexible. Feng wondered whether his own forces would ever get the opportunity to do the same.
MINISTRY OF DEFENCE (MOD)
NEW-DELHI, INDIA
MAY 16, 0810 HRS
“Well, I think it is safe to say that this is typical snafu,” Basu remarked dryly. He looked around and saw the other three men in the room nod their heads in agreement. He walked over and took his seat on the cushioned sofa and sank in. As Ops-Director for the RAW, he was not having a particularly good last few days.
“That about sums it up. Was
that a regular PLA Battalion?” Vinesh Chakri, the Indian Defense-Minister, asked from where he sat, watching the tape on the television screen showing the IR view of the Heron over Shiquanhe.
“Not the first one. That was a police battalion from the Chinese 38TH Police Division. They got ambushed and mauled during the day’s fighting with the Tibetans. That’s when they called in their PLA buddies who, in all their genius, rolled in with armor and heavy guns and neutralized the whole damn village. No question of civilian losses. You see that? There on the left? That’s a complete block of civilian houses demolished by Chinese heavy artillery. Those guys fight insurgency with a heavy hand. And bottom line is that it works. Out Tibetan friends lost a good chunk of their men in this region in just one day’s fighting,” Lieutenant-Colonel Ansari said and paused the tape.
“So much for our chances of coordination and control. Their poor tactics are taking them towards self-destruction. This insurgency is going to be over before we can even make the Chinese bleed enough to care!” Basu said from where he sat.
“What about Gephel and his teams?” Chakri asked Ansari, ignoring Basu’s defeatist attitude for the moment.
“He and his men were down there in these hills you see on the top-left corner of the screen. Our UAV was to the south of the village while the team was northeast. They made good on their escape. All intercepts of Chinese comms revealed no suspicion of the team’s existence. But for all intents and purposes their mission was over before it began.”
“True. Damn idiots, those Tibetans. Couldn’t they have held off the temptation to attack that police convoy for just this once? Now what?”
“We wait until we hear from the Tibetan resistance again on a new contact place,” Basu said as he leaned forward and sat upright on the sofa.
“If they haven’t been compromised by the Chinese already! We could just evac Gephel and his teams out entirely given the haphazard and uncoordinated way the Tibetans are running this thing. Last thing we want to do is get ourselves implicated in all this if they get caught. Especially considering what happened yesterday night in the skies above Ladakh,” the SOCOM officer offered. Chakri shook his head in dismissal:
“No. The Chinese are feeling the pain from the actions being taken by Gephel and his boys. They are motivated and determined to fight for their country under Beijing’s oppression. Let them fight some more. As far as reinforcement and supplies go, get them away from this sector if it’s proving difficult. Have them meet you someplace else. Near Nepal perhaps? Or Sikkim? You decide. I don’t particularly care. All I want is for these men to continue to prove a thorn embedded under Beijing’s feet. The more destabilized Tibet is, the more controllable the Chinese are and the weaker their position is in front of the world. Continue it long enough and they will be forced to negotiate with the Tibetans and us on resolving border issues just to make this whole painful affair stop. At the very least I want them to lose hundreds, if not thousands of their men to these Tibetan rebels. The Dalai Lama is on his way out and the only way the Tibetans will survive Beijing’s genocide against their culture is to fight back against them. If along the way they bring China to its knees with our support…well, then we might have just avenged the dishonor of what happened during the winter of 1962, won’t we?”
Ansari did not answer but instead walked over and shut down the video on the screen and removed the tape. He looked at the tape in his hand and then looked back at the Defense-Minister:
“Yes, we would have.”
LEH AIRBASE
INDIA
MAY 16, 0900 HRS
The three blue-painted ambassador cars pulled up in front of the entrance for the hardened aircraft shelters at one corner of the airbase. A flurry of officers got out of the cars along with Air-Marshal Bhosale. He returned the salutes to the young squadron pilots standing in flight-suits covered with leather jackets to protect from the cold weather of Ladakh. Bhosale walked inside the hardened shelter along with his entourage a few moments later. Once there, he found himself staring at the shredded remains of the port wing of one of the Mig-29s from the previous night. The maintenance crews were attempting to remove sections of the aircraft for transport on board one of the IAF C-17s from Leh to Bangalore for repair.
Bhosale was shown the damaged underside of the aircraft by one of the Sergeants supervising the disassembly operations. It had been a miracle that the aircraft undercarriage had opened properly, allowing the pilot to make an emergency landing that saved the aircraft from total loss. A minute later Khurana walked over and saluted. Bhosale returned the salute.
“Hell of a night, son. Nice work out there preventing this thing from snowballing out of control. You and your men all right?”
“Yes sir. Some minor injuries to the pilot of this aircraft from shrapnel to the cockpit glass. Nothing serious though. He will make it.”
The Air-Marshal nodded as we walked around the crippled Mig-29 with the base commander in tow.
“So what do you make of our Chinese buddies and their intentions?”
“Sir, they are testing our response times, endurance limits and evaluating the overall threat we present to them,” Khurana replied.
“Which is of course in stark contrast to their activities in eastern Tibet. We know they cannot threaten us in this region from the air. Their ground based surface-to-air batteries are a different matter though,” Bhosale said as he walked near the damaged port engine exhaust and checked the deepness of the slash that a shrapnel piece had made into the fuselage paneling. It brought a frown to his face. He turned to face Khurana.
“You did good work out there to control the situation. I know how easy it must have been to let go and take down the bugger who did this. But as it happens, we are operating under a policy of restraint from New-Delhi. The idea is to not provoke a war right now. Unfortunately, events such as this one will change the rules. I will make sure of it. We will not sit by and accept losses in men and material simply to avoid provocation. I am headed to Delhi after this. Let’s see if I can get you boys the freedom of action you need to ensure this never happens again,” Bhosale nodded to Khurana as he walked away from the hanger with the base commander and his entourage.
Once outside and seeing the brown mountains of Leh and a gray overcast sky above, he turned to the base commander even as he entered the back of his car:
“The gloves will come off sooner rather than later the way the mess in Tibet is spiraling out of control. And Beijing is going to lash out once they get pushed beyond a certain limit. What happened yesterday night might just be a precursor of things to come. Samik, get your boys ready. For anything.”
THE JUNWEI-KONG-JUN
BEIJING, CHINA
MAY 25, 0900 HRS
The walk through the corridors of power was not a relaxed one for Feng. Neither was the thought of standing in front of some of the most powerful men in the Chinese military. He had been having a very busy month, and this visit was just another in a series of visits to this very building and to meet the very same people. And despite that he had not gotten used to it. He was more at home at his base on the fringes of China rather than at the heart of it. But this visit had not been his doing.
He walked with Lieutenant-General Chen into the office of Colonel-General Wencang. His personal assistant stood up and saluted from his desk outside Wencang’s office when he saw the two senior officers walking up. They paused and returned the young Lieutenant’s salute and then Chen signed in his entry on the receptions register while the young man opened the door for the two men into the office. As they walked in, they saw Wencang sitting behind his desk reading through some papers. He stopped that work as Chen and Feng walked up to his large wooden desk. Feng noticed the engraved symbol of the PLAAF on the wooden sides of the desk and smiled.
Privileges of rank…
“So gentlemen, what do you have for me?” Wencang asked as he put down his papers and removed his reading glasses. He motioned both men to sit down. Chen decided
to walk over to a rack and hang his uniform coat. He and Wencang went back many years and there was little in terms of formality between them.
“What I have, Wencang, is a big administrative mess inside a potential warzone that needs clearing up,” Chen said.
“So I hear. I have asked General Jinping to consider your recommendations for merging the operational region Air-Force units under a single commander. I added a side note that you should be it’s commander when the time comes,” Wencang said as he leaned back into his leather seat behind the desk. Chen walked back from the coat rack and pulled a seat from the front of the desk and casually sat down.
“Good,” he said finally with a smile.
Wencang folded his hands and swiveled his chair towards the tall windows on the side of his office.
“There are other considerations as well. The rebels in Tibet grow more audacious each day. Our intelligence believes the Indians are actively assisting them,” he said neutrally.
Chen shared a look with Feng in silence. This was new to them. The PLA and its handling of the Tibetan population in the TAR were usually not their areas of responsibility and were usually far outside the loop of information. But the look on Wencang’s face said it all for them. Beijing was considering a response if they could confirm their speculations about Indian involvement…
