Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

vivek_ahuja
BRF Oldie
Posts: 2394
Joined: 07 Feb 2007 16:58

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by vivek_ahuja »

Image
IN LOW EARTH ORBIT
APPROACHING THE INDIAN WEST COAST
14TH MARCH + 0700 HRS


The satellite drifted above the brown-green subcontinent as it headed southwest. The camera’s optics silently zoomed on the slowly drifting mushroom cloud over the waters of the Arabian sea just northwest of the Mumbai coastline. As the brown pillar of dust and smoke lazily drifted eastwards, the optics on the satellite zoomed in further on northwest Mumbai. Sea water had flooded the roads and turned them into gridlocks. Panicked people were attempting to make their way through the water as rumors and fears, perhaps justified, of nuclear fallout and nuclear war spread through the media. The satellite noted damage by the wall of water caused by the blast on almost all of the coastal buildings. But in the serene desolation of space, it was a muted sight…

INDIAN AEROSPACE COMMAND
BANGALORE
14TH MARCH + 0705 HRS


The scene was anything but serene down on terra firma at the operations center for the Indian Aerospace command, the nodal agency for the combined Indian space based assets. When one required a high-level view of things on the ground, you couldn’t go higher than the assets under control from here.

“Tell me what happened!” Air-Marshal Malhotra ordered. As men around him hurried trying to get their assessments put together, Malhotra stared at the large screen in front of him showing the live feed of what the satellite was seeing above Mumbai. He looked at the corner of the screen as it showed various orbital parameters of the satellite in question. He saw the bird overflying Mumbai at the moment was RISAT-2A, a recently launched satellite. RISAT, or Radar Imaging Satellites, were one of the newer generation series of satellites to be put under military command in India following the war with China three years ago and the losses in space assets incurred during it.

For Malhotra, it was very much a sense of déjà-vu. It was as though he was witnessing the very same acts that had started the bloody war with China. The same opening moves in a game of devastation. When that war had started, it had been a younger Malhotra at the helms of the newly formed Indian Aerospace forces, operating out of Bangalore.

A much younger self…he reminded himself as he rubbed his eyes to remove the sleep from them. The brief and brutal war had drained many years from his life.

And so it was. Over the two weeks of conflict that had taken place from the mountains of Ladakh to the cities of Bhutan and the high seas off the Indonesian coasts, space based assets had proven crucial in that war. At the time, however, India had been caught flat footed regarding the military reality of space in modern war. It lacked redundancy in space assets which meant that every loss was crippling to Indian satellite coverage. India had also lacked offensive space weapons such as anti-satellite or ASAT weapons…and the Chinese had not.

Malhotra was on point when one of his precious birds had been taken out over northern Tibet by Chinese ASAT missiles later in the war. And it had almost cost them the war…

Following the war, Malhotra had enjoyed an extended stay in charge of his beloved space control units. Longer than most people in such positions. But he had been the right man with the right operational credentials to expand Indian military dominance in space. During the last three years, numerous crash programs had been initiated by him to enlarge the Aerospace Command to the level where it actually was a full Command of the Indian military, operated jointly by all three services. Numerous launches and deployment of military satellites had been authorized by the government following the war. RISAT-2A was one of the products of this expansion program. And of course, he had also been promoted to fit the required rank for anyone commanding this force.

But that had been a legitimate war.
What the hell is this?

Malhotra wondered as he watched the black-and-white picture on the main screen showing the mushroom cloud losing its shape as it broke over the Indian coastline…
“What’s the prevalent local wind conditions out there?” He asked one of the weather people sitting at his operations console nearby.
“East by north,” was the quick reply.
“Fallout is heading inland,” Malhotra noted dryly.

“And some of it will make it to the northern parts of the city by mid-morning today,” an Army Lt-Colonel noted. He was deputed from the Strategic Forces Command and this was part of his job specialization. Malhotra shook his head. He could not picture himself doing such a job with the objectivity it required.

“What’s the yield we are looking at here?” Malhotra asked the Lt-Colonel, who focused his stare on the large screen and then glanced at the resolution data visible on the top-left of the video.
“A few kilotons,” he said with finality. Malhotra turned to his comms people and pointed to the screen with his arm:

“Get the Ops people at S-F-C and give them our preliminary imagery analysis. Our boys in Delhi are going to get their hands on all of this as soon as they know we have it.” He then turned to the Lt-Colonel who had walked closer to the screen and staring at some location of the screen. “What do I tell Delhi on what we think this is?”

The army man turned to face Malhotra: “Sir, I would tell it like it is: Nuclear Terrorism by our friends across the border!”
Singha
BRF Oldie
Posts: 66601
Joined: 13 Aug 2004 19:42
Location: the grasshopper lies heavy

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by Singha »

I had not read this thread for many a moon, until today....but had a very vivid colour dream on wednesday night...perhaps a premonition...

I am in mumbai daytime for some reason with a bank official doing some work and suddenly a low yield device (thin diameter but tall mushroom cloud) explodes in the distance over north mumbai. we run to a car, manage to start it and make for the south where we plan to seek shelter in a house, people are running here and there...house is solid , we plan to get behind several cement walls. just as we come to a stop, another one explodes, this time a bit nearer and a eerie drumming type noise..along with the approaching light...we run into the house and try to blend into one corner near a wall. out in the inner courtyard a mother is serenely feeding her child...the noise and light is getting nearer slowly and I am yelling at the mother to come inside. but perhaps she knew it was too little too late to hide inside the house and kept on comforting and feeding her child to ease its last moments maybe. and that eerie drumming noise.

its been ages since I have seen such destructive dream. normally I dont dream much at all.
raj.devan
BRFite
Posts: 106
Joined: 11 Aug 2016 06:14

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by raj.devan »

Under certain circumstances, a nuclear detonation can create a tsunami.

http://mobile.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/ar ... d=10857121

You might also want to explore the effects that the electro magnetic pulse generated by the detonation would have on Mumbai. And on non EMP hardened equipment operated by the CG and the IN. Thats assuming the explosion is close enough.
Sagar G
BRF Oldie
Posts: 2594
Joined: 22 Dec 2009 19:31
Location: Ghar

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by Sagar G »

Singha saar that's one vivid dream you had.
vivek_ahuja
BRF Oldie
Posts: 2394
Joined: 07 Feb 2007 16:58

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by vivek_ahuja »

Image
VAIRENGTE
MIZORAM
14TH MARCH + 1015 HRS


Pathanya walked into the officer’s mess building and saw a crowd of his fellow instructors standing by the wall mounted television in the ante room. Pathanya noticed the grim look on their faces and aborted his short walk to the library to find out what the matter was. He found one of his fellow Para-SF instructor, Major Shivale, standing with his arms folded to the rear of the group crowding around the television.

“Samik, what’s going on?” Shivale turned to see Pathanya walk in and then faced the television again.
“Not sure,” he replied with his fingers cupping his chin. “News coming in on all channels of Mumbai having gone dark all of a sudden. Some saying that a tsunami has flooded all of the coastal areas. No warning or anything. People in panic over there.”

Pathanya let out a deep breath as he exhaled in consideration. This was the first he was hearing about it at any rate…
Hell of a morning!

“Well, natural disasters aren’t anything new,” he replied with a hand on Samik’s shoulder. “Stuff happens. Let’s find out if any of the boys who have relatives in Mumbai or nearby coastal areas need to take some immediate leave and see what we can do. I…”

Oh god!

Pathanya and Shivale both jerked towards the screen and saw the video above the shoulders of the crowd. A breaking news report had just aired a video taken on the ground at Mumbai. The scene showed a brownish-white mushroom cloud dissipating into the morning blue skies north of Mumbai…
“Shit! This is no ******!ng natural disaster! We have been attacked!” one of the young Lieutenants in the room exclaimed. Pathanya pushed past the young officers to take a closer look at the television screen.

Yup. No doubt about it now!

The room around him was already a hotbed of a dozen simultaneous conversations, ranging from panicked first reactions to anger, sadness and shock based exclamations. Shivale let loose his own choice expletives under his breath, just loud enough for Pathanya to turn his head on. He muted the television and turned to Shivale:
“Forget the ******!ng vacations! Scramble everybody for war! Headquarters is probably still running around like a headless chicken but we need to get prepared by the time they are. Time to get ahead of this!”

Shivale nodded and then turned to the group of young officers behind him and shouted loud enough for his veins to show up on his forehead: “Quiet! Pull yourselves together! You are officers, for god’s sake! Indian Army officers! Act like it! This shit…” he pointed to the television screen showing the mushroom cloud again and again now, “is just the start. We will find out who did this and we will kill them. When the time comes, the government and the Army is going to look to us to slit the perpetrator’s throats. So put your personal stuff away, right now!

The room was now completely silent with all the officers in attention. Pathanya switched off the television and turned to face the group.

“Gentlemen, let’s face the facts. This is in all probability, a terrorist strike. If we were under a full up attack, we wouldn’t be here in this mess hall five hours after the fact. The only reason we haven’t been briefed about this is because this has just happened. That said, expect the unexpected, gentlemen. We are the tip of the spear that will be shoved through the bodies of whoever did this insidious attack. So get yourselves in that mode. I want everybody ready with their equipment within the hour! Go!”

As everybody saluted and left the room soberly, and Shivale started to do the same, Pathanya grabbed the man by his shoulder, motioning him to stay behind. He waited till the last of the officers had left the room.
“Regardless of what we tell these boys, Samik, this situation is not going to stay in control. We can take a bet on who’s responsible for this attack but my money is on our Pakistani friends. You can’t just get nuclear weapons anywhere except in Pakistan. The government will figure this out sooner or later, and what happens after is anybody’s guess. God knows what they are thinking at this very moment!”

Shivale nodded in agreement. He then smiled wickedly: “Well, don’t know about you, buddy, but this will be my first war! And damn it to hell if I am going to be sitting in Mizoram when the balloon goes up. I am going to go find the old man about this.”

Pathanya looked at the man neutrally and then nodded. Shivale walked out of the room, leaving Pathanya to his thoughts. He sighed to himself as he switched on the television again to see the consistent videos showing the mushroom cloud north of Mumbai.

Shivale’s enthusiasm for getting his feet wet did not seem unnatural to him. He had been the same when he had been tagged to lead his recon team into Bhutan during the war with China. He had even beamed with pride when they had given his team the codename Spear. But he had been younger then, and not so much in years as in experience. His days in Bhutan during the war had tempered his enthusiasm more so than his colleagues here, many of whom had been forced to sit on the Pakistan border during the war, straining at the leash but unreleased for combat against China. But this younger crowd had not yet tasted the horror of modern, high-intensity war against a determined enemy. He had. And it wasn’t pretty. The fact that only four members of his original team had survived the war in Bhutan was testament to it. His enthusiasm for war had died alongside his men in the mountains of that Himalayan kingdom…

So what does that mean exactly? Time to turn in your spurs and leave? Bullshit. Why the hell did you return, anyway?

The Army’s Special Operations Command was going to need his services and he knew it. He was one of the experienced combat leaders in their toolkit to be used for whatever this crisis required. For all of Shivale’s enthusiasm and competency, he had not been bloodied by war. Pathanya had. Literally…he reminded himself as his thought went to the scars on his leg. It was time to pull himself out of whatever was holding himself back, and he knew it. His face changed from neutrality to one of grim determination as he saw the latest videos showing convoys of Indian Army trucks making their way into Mumbai kitted out with fill Nuclear-Biological-Chemical, or NBC, suits. He had prayed to god that he would not have to see such scenes in his lifetime.

Isn’t that what my men died for in Bhutan? Isn’t that what we were trying to protect?

He balled his hands into a fist and walked out of the room into the now-bustling corridors, leaving the television running as it was…
Last edited by vivek_ahuja on 01 Feb 2014 23:49, edited 1 time in total.
Akshay Kapoor
Forum Moderator
Posts: 1643
Joined: 03 May 2011 11:15

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by Akshay Kapoor »

Hi Vivek,

I must be behind the curve on your writings. So CIJWS has become a Special Operations Command HQ I presume? Do you still have my email id? Happy to give you some inputs if you want.

Akshay
vivek_ahuja
BRF Oldie
Posts: 2394
Joined: 07 Feb 2007 16:58

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by vivek_ahuja »

Akshay Kapoor wrote:I must be behind the curve on your writings. So CIJWS has become a Special Operations Command HQ I presume? Do you still have my email id? Happy to give you some inputs if you want.
Hi Akshay,

Please see the first posts on Fenix further up. CIJWS is still as it is but SOCOM has been activated in this universe! 8) Pathanya is just posted to the CIJWS as one of the instructors experienced with mountain warfare.

I still have your email. Please send me a ping when you get some time.

Cheers!

-Vivek
disha
BR Mainsite Crew
Posts: 8242
Joined: 03 Dec 2006 04:17
Location: gaganaviharin

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by disha »

So now we have a JDAM (Jihadi Deployed Atomic Munition). This is very interesting. This is the second time (once it was in late 80s) that I read about JDAM but the author had brought it as a sub-text of subcontinental love story. This is great!
vivek_ahuja
BRF Oldie
Posts: 2394
Joined: 07 Feb 2007 16:58

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by vivek_ahuja »

Image
NEW DELHI
14TH MARCH + 1215 HRS


“This has Lashkar-e-Taiba’s hands all over it.”
That simple?” Basu said as he lit his cigarette and took clicked the lighter off. He looked around at the men in the room as he puffed on his cigarette from behind his desk. Most of the men in the room were about his age. Most were even balding as he had started to.
“You disagree?” One of the older men said from his seat at the couch.
“Not really,” Basu said after consideration. “Just that I expected Makki’s boys to be smarter.”

“You are disappointed that they only managed to kill what looks like a few thousand people? And irradiated northern Mumbai?!” the old man said with emotion bristling in his voice. Basu ignored the heat of the moment. As director of operations for the Research and Analysis Wing, or RAW, as India’s premier external intelligence agency was known, his job required objectivity and detachment. His colleagues in the room were struggling with it, though. He decided to not poke that emotion further.
“So we are pinning this one on Makki then? Why?” Basu asked as he changed gears and put a mental note to later investigate his own thoughts on the matter. “Just because this looks like the result of a similar terrorist attack in 2008? Isn’t that a little too convenient?”

“Well, Muzammil is already talking to the media from his hiding hole outside of Lahore. Bragging the religious poison he likes to spew. Like he did last time.” One of Basu’s advisors replied dryly. The man on couch grunted and shifted in his seat: "Those ba$tards are like leeches, they will take credit for the kind of shit that others don’t want to take responsibility for.”
Basu continued to puff his cigarette as he watched the conversation flow in front of him.
“I take it that none of the actual operatives lived to tell the tale?” the man on the couch said again. Basu’s advisor nodded in agreement: “The ba$tards took down one of our coast guard aircraft and a patrol vessel that attempted to stop them from reaching Mumbai. The crew of that vessel sacrificed themselves to save the citizens of Mumbai!”

“Shot down an aircraft?” Basu interjected.

“One of the coast-guard patrol aircraft,” the advisor noted from the papers in front of him. “Let’s see…ah, okay. One of the Dornier-228 type aircraft. Coastal security had vectored them to the inbound vessel to investigate. The aircraft made contact and ordered the vessel to stop its approach. The crew notified their command that the vessel was highly suspicious and asked a coast-guard ship to be deployed to assist in verification. The crew spent fifteen minutes buzzing the boat and collecting video on it before they were shot down by an onboard shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile…”
“Wait,” the man on the couch interjected as he leaned forward. “We have the video of the ship firing the missile? How?”
“They were streaming it to Coastal Security Ops at the time. They have the audio and video of it at Naval headquarters at the moment,” the advisor noted and then cleared his throat. “Poignant stuff, the last few minutes of that audio.”
“I bet,” Basu noted neutrally. “Continue.”
“Well, the Coast-Guard ship made it to the vessel while it was still two-dozen kilometers away from Mumbai harbor. Shots were fired from the crew and disabled the Pakistani boat’s engine, causing it to become dead in the water…”
“And then the cornered LET ba$tards blew up their cargo prematurely.” Basu concluded for his advisor and extinguished the cigarette in the tray before continuing: “Gentlemen, the use of the surface-to-air missile gives away the game, if you ask me. There is no way that that Makki or Muzammil could have managed these resources without the support of our usual suspects in the Inter-Services-Intelligence. The question is why the escalation to nuclear weapons? Knowing the ‘who’, ‘what’ and ‘how’ is important but not so much as the ‘why’. When we find that out, we can get ahead of the enemy’s future plans.”

The old man on the couch nodded agreement and turned to Basu’s advisor: “Tell the Navy and Coast-Guard brass to keep a tight lid on that audio and video. If the enemy doesn’t know we have the evidence, we can get them to make predetermined moves on their original plan, forcing them to give themselves away.”
“Agreed,” Basu added. “But bear in mind that the planners for this strike in Pakistan probably know already that their original plan has failed. The detonation of the weapon so far out at sea has still gotten them damage to Mumbai, but not nearly on the scale it would have if they had succeeded as planned. So they will know that we know something about it. Expect the litany of denials and references to the supposed Non-State-Actors to follow.”

“South Block and the Prime Minister’s office is going to be asking us questions very soon.” The man on the couch noted. Basu leaned back in his chair as he thought that over.
“I know…” he added absent mindedly, “…that they are going to want some action plans for us. Let’s look into that as well. Nuclear terrorism is not your usual run of the mill stuff. The government will want to take action on this one. If we have to get Makki’s head on a platter for it, we should have a plan to do that. Let’s get started on that one before we are asked for it.”
“Military options?” the advisor asked soberly.
“Yes,” Basu replied, now sitting straighter. “Let’s be prepared for that as well. If we can solidify the Rawalpindi’s involvement in this, there is every possibility of a warlike situation.”
The man in the couch grunted at that: “At least that will make our action plans more doable! If we have active military support in our operations, that will remove Makki’s protection cover that he currently enjoys right now.”

“We will see,” Basu noted neutrally. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves! This government hasn’t really followed up on any past provocations either. So I won’t be betting money this time either
Except, the nuclear threshold has been crossed, this time. We will have to act or stand to invite further such strikes! There has to some line in the sand, right?

Basu terminated the meeting shortly afterwards after planning to meet again after his meeting with the Prime Minister and the Cabinet. He was still lost in his thoughts, trying to figure out a game whose rules he did not yet comprehend.

Was this a new game? Or just the old one with different rules?

He needed some advice on matters his department did not specialize in. Fortunately, he knew a man who did. An old friend with whom Basu and others had worked closely three years ago. He walked outside his office and asked his assistant to get him Colonel Ansari at SOCOM…
Karan M
Forum Moderator
Posts: 20773
Joined: 19 Mar 2010 00:58

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by Karan M »

Moaaarrrrrr!! :mrgreen:
vivek_ahuja
BRF Oldie
Posts: 2394
Joined: 07 Feb 2007 16:58

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by vivek_ahuja »

Image

RADIATION ZONE PERIMETER
OUTSIDE NORTHEAST MUMBAI
14TH MARCH + 1235 HRS


The crowd of civilians waiting to be airlifted out of the area were pushed away by the wall of dust and hay moved up by the approach of an Air Force Mi-26 helicopter. People held on to their belongings as the cloud enveloped the grassy fields and the winds from the blades of the massive helicopter threatened to uproot trees and people from their feet. One member of the forward deployed ground teams, dressed in a NBC suit down to the breathing apparatus, brought his hands up above his head and made a cross as the helicopter’s wheels touched into the grass and hard terrain, compressing under the massive weight.

As the all-drowning whine of the massive turbine engines began to lower, the ground crews moved up and began walking towards the ramp at the back of the helicopter which was now opening. One of the army officers dressed in his NBC suit also ran up to the side of the helicopter just as the crew-chief on board the helicopter opened the side door. The army Captain was to the point:
“Can you take some of these civilians out of here on your return flight?”

The crew chief waved for him to hold and ran up to the cockpit where the pilot and co-pilot were seated. The pilot unstrapped himself and walked back to the side door. He saw that other army personnel were already unstrapping the BMP vehicle that had been brought in as payload in the cavernous interiors of the helicopter…
“What’s the problem here?” he asked the Captain as he jumped on to the flattened grass. He was taken aback by the fully NBC-suited Army officer in front of him. Has the situation gone that bad here?

“Sir, we have civilians caught out here and no mode of transport for them to be evacuated on! The heading roads are all clogged with water or traffic! Can you take some of them with you on the flight to Pune?”
The pilot, who was a Group-Captain, and the commanding officer of the Air Force’s “Featherweights” Squadron that operated these massive helicopters. Over the decades, however, the attrition on the handful of available helicopters had been significant. Of the four available birds, one had been lost during operations in Bhutan and two others had been removed from the roster for no longer being airworthy; a result of heavy operations and low availability of maintenance support…

The Group-Captain looked back at the helicopter. This was his last bird available. It would not survive this operation. But under the circumstances, he was at a loss to find any better way for the last bird of his squadron to go.
“Get them aboard as soon as the NBC recon vehicle has been offloaded and mobilized!” He then turned to his crew-chief: “Get the civilians up board. As many as you can! And as fast as you can! No mad dashes or chaos! In double file and up from the ramp! Understood?”

The crew-chief nodded in the affirmative so the CO nodded to the Army officer who turned and ran to his men guarding the perimeter around the mass of civilians. Once back in the cockpit, the CO looked at his co-pilot and sighed.
“Call up Base Ops at Pune and tell them we have landed with the cargo and are disgorging. Also tell them to be prepared with DE-CON teams pending our return. We are taking as many civvies out of here as we can!”
As the co-pilot began speaking on his radio-transmitter, the CO went back into the cargo cabin behind him and saw the armored NBC recon vehicle based on the BMP chassis roll off the ramp, leaving the helicopter’s fuselage visibly relaxed. A few moments later the first of the civilians began lining up at the back of the helicopter to begin boarding. The relief visible on their faces and in their eyes. It was a tragic sight to see so many people being displaced from their homes this day…
“Sir,” the co-pilot said, causing the CO to turn around.
“What?”
“Command wants to know how many civilians can we get out of here and how many more will need evac!”

Thousands, probably! The CO thought and let out a muffled curse. He finally recollected his composure: “Tell them we will need to make dozens of trips if we are to get all these people to the safe zones before the fallout hits this area!”

“Roger!” The co-pilot acknowledged and diligently reported the assessment up the command chain…


LOHEGAON AIR FORCE BASE
PUNE
14TH MARCH + 1255 HRS


“God damn it!”
Air-Commodore Verma vented his frustration as he overheard the communications from the Mi-26 crew on the ground near the fallout areas. He turned away from the banks of operations stations and looked around at the scene in the Base Ops center…

You know what you look like? A fifty-three year old man well past his prime still in his green flight-suit standing alongside men and women half his age as they run about making your orders into reality. Time to act like it, old boy!

Verma sighed and resigned himself to the operations at hand. He ordered pilots to their near-certain deaths during the war with the Chinese Air Force three years ago. Back then he had done so from the operations cabin of a Phalcon airborne warning and control aircraft. Though that had been difficult to bear afterwards, at the time they had presented a clear option to him to achieve his goals.

This job, today, was far more insidious…

The enemy here was unfathomable. He could not go out and touch it, or kill it. The only option was to get out of its way. But without resources in hand, would he be forced to give the order he knew his pilots expected him to?

His basic problem was the lack of helicopters at hand to airlift so many people out within a few hours. That was when the first of the radiation fallout was predicted to start getting to dangerous levels in that sector of northeastern Mumbai. It was a simple problem of numbers: X number of helicopters needed for Y number of people to be airlifted out in Z hours. He could not provide X, so he had to give up on either Y or Z.

Neither of which appealed to him as a realistic option. He wasn’t going to be the one leaving innocent people on the ground to suffer from the radiation effects. At the same time, he could not willingly expose both the civilians and the crews of his helicopters to get everybody out at the present projected rate. Something had to give…

Verma walked over to the wooden table in the conference room of the operations center where dozens of large maps had been laid out. Most of them dealt with the geography of the Mumbai region. Other documents were satellite-based color-contour projections of current fallout patterns and projected ones at one-hour intervals. The room was abuzz with both army and air-force people running back and forth in near-chaos conditions. Lohegaon and Pune were the obvious choices for running an operation of this magnitude. Pune because it housed the Army’s Southern Command which was responsible for the entire southern swathe of the Indian subcontinent, and Lohegaon because it was a large hub of Air-Force activity in the region alongside Nagpur airbase. Nagpur would have been Verma’s first choice but that location was where his superior had made his “Strategic” operations center. And as strange or even bizarre as that sounded, Pune was now the “Forward” operating center for air-force operations.

Verma had his job full at the moment alongside his Army and Navy colleagues. The latter two were already heavily involved in the evacuation of people from northern Mumbai into safe sectors to the south. Verma shuddered at the very thought of the magnitude of that task. Anybody who had been to Mumbai even on normal days could testify to the impossibility of the task during a chaotic evacuation…

Out in the northeast of Mumbai, the air-force and army were working in close conjunction under nuclear warfare conditions. The first of the army’s unmanned nuclear reconnaissance vehicles had just been airlifted into the northeastern sector by the “Featherweights” squadron Mi-26. Verma had also deployed several high-altitude Heron unmanned drones above the sector to provide real time intelligence on the ground situation. Through the enhanced black-and-white view of the Heron’s electro-optical pods, they could see the Mi-26 parked on the ground with a mass of civilians flooding the rear of the helicopter. They could also see the “Muntra-N” nuclear recon vehicle beginning to roll under its own power with a puff of engine exhaust and a slight jerk forward…

“Looks like the NBC recon vehicle is operational and moving,” one of the drone commanders noted. Verma looked the man and took a deep breath. “Fair enough, gentlemen. But how the hell do we get the civilians out from there in time? This recon vehicle is only going to confirm what we already expect to happen!”
“Sir!” Verma turned to see one of his Ops people calling from his station. Verma left the people overseeing the Heron operations and walked over to the Ops station. “What is it?”
“Sir, griffon-one-actual is asking permission to see if he can make a landing approach in sector two-bravo to evac civilians out of there.”

Verma raised an eyebrow: “What’s available in two-bravo to land on?”

The Ops officer waved Verma over to the wall screen showing the drone feed from the Heron overhead. The view was centered on a straight stretch of tar road about three-quarters of a kilometer in length and about half kilometer away east of the parked Mi-26 on the ground. The road had apparently been scouted by the army folks there. He could see some of their trucks parked on the grass fields nearby. Verma immediately understood the play.
“Can he make it?” he asked his Ops officer who gave him a we-are-going-to-find-out roll of the eyes. Verma looked back at the screen and evaluated the width and flatness of the tar road. He then turned to face his Ops officer:

“Do it!”

The officer nodded and brought his comms mouthpiece up to his mouth: “Griffon-one-actual, this is Guardian-Operations. Guardian-one has authorized your request and wishes you best of luck! We have you on visual from Guardian-Angel’s eyes at elevation-twenty and will be following you in. Out!”

Verma heard the static-laced response from the flight-crew of the C-130J as they began their approach. He turned to see the wall screen along with everybody in the room and saw the black-and-white screen showing the flat-winged, multi-engine aircraft make its approach on the tar road. The video was without audio except from the incoming radio traffic from the pilots of the aircraft and the Heron operators overhead…

Several minutes later there was a large dust cloud behind the aircraft as it made contact to the tar road and began slowing down. The whitish cloud on the screen enveloped the aircraft for several seconds. The entire room held its breath as they scrutinized the video to see what had happened.

Seconds later the lumbering transport emerged from the dust cloud and began rolling forward a few dozen meters and stopped. Verma let out a very loud breath along with several of his people around him. As they watched, a crowd of civilians were herded towards the waiting aircraft by the soldiers on the ground. Verma turned to his Ops people: “Scramble Griffon-Two and Griffon-Three as well. Griffon-One has blazed a trail for us to follow! Tell them to get in as soon as Griffon-One is off the ground and keep doing it till we get all those civilians out! Move!”

As everybody around him scrambled to the task and the radios went alive with chatter, Verma turned to see the silent video of the parked C-130J on the road with a mass of people boarding it even as its propellers were turning.

Damn heroes!
And yes, you will get a bottle of scotch from me for your actions this day!
chaanakya
BRF Oldie
Posts: 9513
Joined: 09 Jan 2010 13:30

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by chaanakya »

Welcome Back. And its great story again from you. One post a day keeps anxiety away.
vivek_ahuja
BRF Oldie
Posts: 2394
Joined: 07 Feb 2007 16:58

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by vivek_ahuja »

Image

NEW-DELHI
14TH MARCH + 1700 HRS


“Sir, we must act! Now!
“But there is no proof they are involved!” The Prime-Minister responded yet again. Dr. Ravoof watched in silence as the members of the PM’s cabinet fought each other to be heard. Half the group advocated declaration of war against Pakistan. Another half fought against it citing lack of evidence on Islamabad’s involvement. Ravoof had heard both arguments enough time already. He knew the pros and cons of each side. As the External Affairs Minister for the Indian Government, he had held this position and served this PM long enough, through the war with China and the fluid geo-political turmoil thence.

He did notice one major difference between the last time and this one, though. Former Defense-Minister Chakri’s absence was conspicuous in this group meeting. His voice had been one of solid action during the China war and of stoic patience in the face of near-death and chaos. All these characteristics had made the man a legend of sorts within the senior members of the government.
He was probably more responsible for us surviving the war than perhaps any other single person…Ravoof thought to himself as he maintained his silent glance and kept his calm in the chaos of the room. Of course, Chakri had not been a legend just for his wartime actions…

There were many in the government who had stated after the war that Chakri had far exceeded his stated mandate as Defense-Minister. When the realities of the pre-war Indian involvement in the Tibetan rebellion had surfaced, Chakri had become the focal point of those that looked to find a scapegoat. Special-warfare teams built around soldiers of Tibetan ethnicity had been infiltrated into Tibet during the rebellion to help bring down Chinese control over the region. They had succeeded enough to scare the Chinese into conducting a desperate and precipitated military response…
And what followed was the most brutal war between the two Asian giants…Ravoof sighed and leaned back in his chair.

The man had exceeded his stated mandate…but not his personal one!

After watching his country slide down towards impotence under past governments, Ravoof could never bring himself to blame Chakri for what he had done. It had been three years now and he still could not bring himself to do it.

But others had. Leading the charge for his removal had been the PM himself, who saw Chakri as an affront to his own authority and as a convenient scapegoat to offer to those in the government and the media who demanded someone’s head on a platter for the Tibetan covert operations. And so Chakri had resigned his position under unbearable pressure and returned to his house in the outskirts of the city, to hide out from the floodlights of the media and his enemies in the government. He had been forced to become a relative nobody on the political scene despite his accomplishments for the country…

Ravoof frowned at his own conclusions.

The PM had survived the war in a condition better than when he had started it. Having taken the credit for Chakri’s actions as his own, he had conveniently buried his own glaring deficiencies on matters of national security that had almost cost India its war with China. Riding on popular belief that he had led the country to victory, he had been reelected to office with popular majority of the votes. He had broad authority as PM like which his predecessors had dared not dream about…

And yet at the core of it lay a weak and vindictive man. A man who had shown time and again to falter under chaos, to stick to ideology when the time required pragmatism. And one who offered flowers when the situation demanded the stick. As one of the most senior members of the government, Ravoof had a front seat to this man over the last four years. And for that very reason Ravoof had used his vast diplomatic skills to ensure that a situation never rose that would put this PM to the test he knew he would not pass.

Well, the Pakistanis put paid to that effort today!
And now with Chakri no longer present to keep the ship heading the right way…

“Sir, if we do not act in response to his massive attack, neither we nor this party will survive in government even for a month!” Bafna, the new politically appointed Defense-Minister, knew which side of the bread to butter, even when his country’s life hanged in the balance.
“Not to mention invite additional such strikes against other cities,” Basu added from the side of the conference table occupied by the Intelligence experts. Unlike Bafna, Basu had no time for politics. His mandate was clear: country first.
The PM rubbed his eyes and looked at Basu: “Do we have any proof that the Pakistani government is involved in the attack? Any proof at all? I can’t very well declare war on that country because the terrorists who are based there carried out an attack, insidious as the attack may be!”
“Depends really,” Basu replied, keeping his calm.
“Depends on what?!” Bafna asked testily.

“On what you consider the ‘government’ over there to be!” Basu replied sharply and continued: “You want proof that their government made this attack a part of their five-year plan down from the level of Prime-Minister? Of course they didn’t! That’s not how covert operations work! What did you think? That they were going to come up and own this attack as theirs? They are cunning, not stupid!”
“You watch your insinuations, Basu!” Bafna shouted back with pointed fingers. He had always seen Basu as another one of Chakri’s leftover people in the defense establishment, and as such, someone who was not on ‘his side’. Bafna, like the Prime-Minister, was not one to think of their country as the side that mattered…

“Enough!” Ravoof entered the fray, silencing both parties. He then turned to Basu: “We know that this operation was probably handled by lower level operatives on the ground and certain senior level individuals in the Pakistani military. There is no other way that these attackers could have gotten their hands on a nuclear device. So…” Basu leaned back in his chair, his arms folded, “what we need to understand is that this is not a court of law. We cannot and should not expect clear cut evidence to appear that will make the decision clear for us.”
“So what exactly are you saying?” the PM asked with a confused look bristling with irritation. Ravoof ignored the obvious condescension.

“Simply that there are only three alternatives for us,” Ravoof said as he brought his fingers out. “One, we capture, arrest and bring to justice the people involved with the attack. This includes the capture of key militant leaders from within Pakistan. Two, we accept the fact that Pakistan will never even acknowledge that the nuclear device used was its own. And hence will not hand over to us the military people involved in the attack, even if they were acting rogue. In this case we have to be prepared to punish Pakistan and its government as a whole. Or three, we count on Islamabad being reasonable and pursue the course of relative inaction while we try and convince them to come straight.”

“That third option will bring down this government! Make no mistake about it!” Bafna added dryly with a glance shot to the other senior ministers in the room as Ravoof leaned back in his seat. The PM looked lost for words for several seconds during which everyone became aware of the silence in the room. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the PM looked at Basu and the National Security Advisor sitting next to him.
“Do we know who did this attack? Can we go get them?”

Okay, here we go…
Basu thought as he leaned forward in his seat: “We know the group that carried out the actual attack, sir. It’s very clear that the Lashkar-e-Taiba is the group to which the attackers belonged. It was carried out by a team lead by one Anwar Afridi. Needless to say, he’s dead. Makki, who is the group leader, is in Pakistani custody and more of a figurehead than real. That leaves Muzammil as the real leader calling the shots. His group has already claimed responsibility for the attack and is warning of more if we do not immediately begin to pull out of Kashmir.”
“Needless to say, we cannot pull out of Kashmir!” Bafna interjected.
“Cannot, or should not?” Ravoof added neutrally, but the sting found its mark…
“Should not!” Bafna corrected rather expressively.
“Anyway,” Basu continued, moving his glance back to the PM: “cutting past their religious and political rhetoric, we can expect that the Pakistanis will keep them employed in a conventional role only at the moment. More attacks in Kashmir to drive their points home to us, for example. But non-nuclear.”

“Keep in mind,” the NSA added, “that LET is merely a proxy for the actions of the Pakistani intelligence agencies. They are the ones keeping things in calibration. If we get our hands on Muzammil, we are likely to find out just how high up their attack goes.”
“And we may not like what we find out,” the PM said in conclusion. “But if the only other plan is to strike Pakistan as a whole, I will rather take the option of grabbing Muzammil and put him on trial for terrorism!”
No surprises there…Ravoof thought and shared a momentary glance with Basu. The PM then turned to Basu and the other intelligence officials: “Find out where that ******** lives and come up with a plan that we can act on!”
“Sir,” Bafna interrupted, “I should warn you that such a plan is both risky politically as well as militarily. For one thing, carrying out this plan could take a long time, during which we will appear to be doing nothing. The public and the media will not accept it. By the time the plan is actually executed, we may not even be in Delhi to call the shots! Also, assuming that the operation goes off without a hitch, the Pakistanis will be crying bloody murder and that will trigger a war in itself!”

The PM sighed and rubbed his eyes in frustration.

“So what do you suggest?” Ravoof asked.
“I suggest we act now! We inform Islamabad to either hand over the terrorists or we will begin air-strikes against their terror camps in occupied Kashmir.”
“Are you insane?” Basu shouted. “You want to tell them in advance that we will be attacking the terror camps? You realize that if we do that, the camps will be nothing but deserted buildings by the time our missiles reach there? And the Pakis will allow it! Why not? They get to lay waste to northern Mumbai with a nuclear warhead and all we do is strike empty buildings in the mountains!”
“At least it will show the public we are doing something!” Bafna shouted back. “And if Islamabad knows about it then the chances of the strikes spilling over into total war are nullified.”
Basu rubbed his forehead with his right hand as he spoke: “Is that really what you want to do? Pretend to be doing something as opposed to doing something real?”

“It’s better than the iffy plan of grabbing Muzammil from his residence near Lahore without causing war between the two countries!”
“I would prefer,” the PM added, “to not put the democratic government of Pakistan in a situation where their only recourse is to shelve our deep peace initiatives to pacify their populace. The same way I would not like to be led into a war by my militaristic ministers! A second time!!

The room went silent on that last note. Ravoof noted that last phrase and it revealed to him the level of distrust the PM had developed for those in his government who advocated military response to national security problems. Even when the latter were correct to demand such action, it put them at a disadvantage and in disfavor with this Prime-Minister. A man could burst an artery in frustration but would be unlikely to budge the man to take solid military action when offered a flimsy offer of a peaceful alternative. And as such, Ravoof did not envy Basu and the NSA at all…
The strategic course of action now decided, the PM ended the meeting to let his ministers and military officials start working on the details. Ravoof grabbed Basu by the arm as they left the room into the corridor. Despite Basu’s curious looks, Ravoof said nothing until they were out of earshot of the departing people, most of whom were anyway too busy to notice.

“You know, as well as I do, that these strikes against the terror camps will not yield anything worth a damn,” Ravoof said dryly.
“So?” Basu replied, almost having accepted the sad truth of the matter.
“So,” Ravoof responded, his voice calm, “this matter is more important than to be left to politicians looking after their own skin. How realistic are our chances for grabbing Muzammil?”
“If we can nail his position while he is on the move, then we should be able to do it. But the government will never authorize it.”
“Not if it fails, of course!” Ravoof added with dry humor. “Come on, Basu. This is right up your sleeve. Think it through. You are being offered a virtual blanket of ‘clean-and-surgical’ to do what you and your boys do best.”
Basu smiled as he caught on. Of course he could not even think of such action without senior members of the government supporting him. That was what Chakri had done for him in Tibet three years ago. They had shared a common vision about China and the intersection of the two vision had made possible everything that had followed. Basu had never been officially named in the investigations, though only for lack of proof. He wasn’t the country’s external intelligence go-to guy for no reason! And Ravoof was certainly no Chakri, but he only needed to be close enough…

“One other thing,” Ravoof added as he turned to head his way: “Make it quick and dirty! We owe this one to the citizens of Mumbai.”
member_28448
BRFite -Trainee
Posts: 2
Joined: 11 Aug 2016 06:14

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by member_28448 »

raj.devan wrote:I think the book gave a very real Indian pov in addition to a pov from every side in the conflict. Jeff does not portray any particular side as a villain, and thoroughly justifies the action of every side, especially in the case of the Chinese alliance.

India's own pov is given through a detailed character construct of an Indian engineer who understands that his country has no option but to wage war, but still knows that the war will exact a heavy price on his country's future..
Thank you for your review, Raj, and your kind words.

I appreciate your candid and rational handling of the way the plot ebbed and flowed. I tried to present the rational from both sides of the issues and confrontation throughout the novels...and as you saw, the novels were anything but some kind of US MIlitary and Technologies trump all comers. The US suffers very grievoous defeats in thos pages and it almost defeated in the overall war. Anyhow, it is, after all, a fictional tale and was never meant to be a documentary or prediction of actual future events.

HAving siad that, I greatly apprectiate greatly the Indian position on many matters, and hope our two countries will continue to gravitate towards one another despite whatever differences. Our fundamnetal values and systems are far closer than they are apart, and we share many of the same national interests as peoples.

I had the great pleasure of visiting India in 1996 as a engineering and rpogram management consultant working on finding some tehcnical/engineering work for a client whom I had been hired to review the capabilitiers of the personnel from several companies in several countries for the work. Back then we visited Mumbai (then called Bombay), Chennai (then called Madras), Bangalore, and New Delhi. We spent upwards of a week in each location. We also visited several other countries for this outsourcing.

Ultimately, the decision was made to award the contract to a company in Bangalore for a variety of reasons, and it worked out very well. I urged and was successful in getting the Client (a large North American firm) to actually pay $3 more per hour than they were planning to pay, as long as it was written into the contract that that $3/hr would go directly to the workers on our project for their efforts. I convinced my employers that incenting the work force in this manner would help assure a high quality product on a long term basis as much as many of the other contractual agreements we came up with. And it did.

Anyhow, with the Chinese rapidly advancing in military and technological areas, and already using their new found capabilities to further influence their neighbors, particularly in the South China Sea, it is incumbant on nations like the US, India, Japan, Australia, South Korea, etc. to work togehter with their own military and technological advancements to persuade the Chinese that though they may be expanding rapidly, they cannot hope to keep up with a united group of nations all working in concert together.

Once again, thank you for your kind words.
raj.devan
BRFite
Posts: 106
Joined: 11 Aug 2016 06:14

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by raj.devan »

Vivek, the scene involving the PM and his advisors was completely brilliant. The way the narrative brought out the stress and tension it almost played out like a well made movie in my mind. And the prospect of a black grab makes for a thrilling cliffhanger.
Rahul M
Forum Moderator
Posts: 17168
Joined: 17 Aug 2005 21:09
Location: Skies over BRFATA
Contact:

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by Rahul M »

vivek, you havn't watched D-Day recently by any chance, have you ? ;)
vivek_ahuja
BRF Oldie
Posts: 2394
Joined: 07 Feb 2007 16:58

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by vivek_ahuja »

Rahul M wrote:vivek, you havn't watched D-Day recently by any chance, have you ? ;)
:mrgreen:

Actually, I hadn't even heard of that movie until you told me. I went and looked it up on wiki and other places. But now that you have told me so, I shall watch it! 8)
vivek_ahuja
BRF Oldie
Posts: 2394
Joined: 07 Feb 2007 16:58

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by vivek_ahuja »

Image

RAWALPINDI
PAKISTAN
14TH MARCH + 2230 HRS
'

You son of a bitch! What the hell have you done?”
General Shakril Hussein looked up from his papers as the Pakistani Prime-Minister walked into his office. The door to his office slammed shut on its own momentum as the civilian man’s large hand shoved it. Hussein said nothing as he removed his glasses and put them on the papers laying on his desk. His composure further irritated the man purportedly his superior…
“I take it you mean the attack on Mumbai?” Hussein said with a trace of condescension lacing his tone.
“Of course!” the PM shouted back, “Are you trying to get us all killed?”
“What makes you think we did it?” Hussein said as he leaned back.
“Don’t you dare play games with me!” the PM thundered. “The whole world knows it’s us! I am getting calls from every head of state threatening everything from sanctions to war! And for what? What the hell are you playing at over here?”

Hussein got up from his seat with a suddenness that shook the Pakistani PM, who moved a step back. Hussein rested his knuckled fist on the wooden desk and leaned forward: “I am doing my job. My job is to bring our enemies down and protect Pakistan. If I have to destroy the powerful economy of my enemies through direct action, I won’t hesitate. The Indians won’t dare attack us. Not now. Not while we have nuclear weapons. Not while their conventional forces are still recovering from their bloody war with our Chinese allies…”

“Now was not the time, Shakril!” the PM interjected.

“Now was exactly the time!” Hussein thundered back with his fist pounding the desk with a loud thud. “The Indians are militarily weak. Afghanistan is almost fallen and the Americans have finally withdrawn from the region. The Chinese did most of the work for us! They so conveniently brought themselves and the Indians to their knees, perfectly placed for a swipe of our sword to cut off the head as well! Their military is weakened, demoralized and will be occupied with the cleanup in Mumbai for weeks. Their economy, on the other hand, will never recover from this strike. Watch how all western investment within India disappears over the next year fearing another nuclear attack from the faithful mujahedeen! Mumbai is finished. And so is India for that matter.”

As Hussein finished his tirade, the Pakistani PM stood in silence, stunned. For several seconds both men stared into the eyes of the other and silence filled the room.
“Direct action?” the PM continued. “I fear you chose the wrong words there. You might as well have said unilateral action instead. You have left no doubt today about who runs this country. I should tender my resignation for all the good it will do. At least that way I won’t be judged by history when they review why Pakistan was turned into a radioactive wasteland for the follies of its leaders!”
Hussein smirked and took his seat. The PM continued to stand, looking at the man before him.
“Don’t be overdramatic sir,” Hussein said with a voice bristling with condescension. “Your country still needs you to help it navigate out of this fearful mess. Caused by the war on terror, of course. Besides, your grateful acceptance of the Indian Prime-Minister’s peace initiatives bestows you with an air of credibility as a man of peace. Use it and we will all come out of this with our heads still attached to our bodies…except the Indians of course!” Hussein smiled as he leaned back in his chair.

“You,” the PM said, then held himself for a couple seconds as he struggled for words and attempted to contain his bursting anger. And then gave up in disgust, turning away from the desk and making for the door. At the door, he stopped and turned around:
“Quite obviously, I am not aware of the inner working of these offices, General. But there is one aspect of all this you have not considered. Your plans are based on certain assumptions. I would not like to be present when they are proven wrong. For one thing, you assume the Indians are on their knees. Over the last several decades, many of your predecessors have done the same, sitting behind the very same desk as you do now. And they were wrong. To the last man. For their follies we paid with half our country, Kashmir, our Northwest Frontier provinces and our economy. And contrary to their pre-war plans, India grew big and powerful. I fear that this time we will have nothing but our lives with which to pay for your mistakes. There is nothing else left.”

“You defeatism is noted, sir,” Hussein stated off-handedly. “But unless you have a point to make, I have things to do here! As you can imagine, the Indians are becoming very agitated along our western border. We will mobilize to remind them that such actions are foolish and ultimately worthless.”

The PM let out a breath and looked at the floor before turning back to face the man clearly not interested in what he had to say: “The point, General, is that Mumbai isn’t Kargil and nuclear weapons are nuclear weapons. There is a threshold and it has been crossed. Now what happens I is clearly beyond the hands of civilians leaders on either side. On our side you have shown me where my authority stands. But the Indians,” the PM waved his hands out of the eastward facing window, currently covered with curtains, “…are not going to take this laying down. Once they find out where the trail of bread crumbs leads, they will come for us.”

“Indeed?” Hussein said, half amused by what he considered the civilian in front of him playing at things clearly above his head. “And how will they do that? Unlike 2008, the perpetrators for the strike on Mumbai are already dead. LET leaders have already staked the claim on the attack. Its yet another deadly terrorist attack and nothing more. They may lash out at us for action and you, my dear friend, will deliver on the back and forth between Islamabad and New-Delhi. But nothing will come off it. And Mumbai will still become deserted as an economic hub. And the rest of the Indian economy will follow soon enough. After that, the Indians will have far greater local worries to deal with as their country falters!”

The PM grunted, amused at the confidence on display in front of him. “It’s all cut and dried that well, eh?”
“Unlike you and your fellow politicians,” Hussein stated as he put on his glasses to go about his previous work, “I work in actual deliverables, not promised ones to a raging mob. Our work is precise and surgical.”
Precise and surgical, General?” the PM said as he opened the door of the office while Hussein picked up the papers from his desk. “So was Kargil!” the PM stated and slammed the door as he walked out.

The Kargil war…Hussein thought to himself. The PM was right on that score. Several factors had played into Pakistan’s defeat in 1999. Least of which was the underestimation of the Indian response to the occupation of the mountains around Kargil by Pakistan. Despite the overt Pakistani nuclear threat laid out by General Musharraf, New-Delhi had not stopped in its campaign to take back the peaks. Instead, it had counter-deployed its own nuclear-tipped missiles as well, forcing a nuclear standoff while the conventional war raged, ultimately to Pakistan’s defeat.

The way Hussein looked at it, the problem during that war was the very clear and direct involvement of Pakistan in the fighting. And nothing galvanized the Indian public more than the specter of Pakistan claiming Indian land. The very same public forced the Indian government to stand taller and with a stiff back. In his view, Musharraf and his Generals had a reasonably laid out plan, but it’s fatal flaw was the direct involvement of Pakistani troops and general presence. Such a target was what the Indians could aim their guns at.

But that has been rectified, hasn’t it?
If very clear ‘non-state’ actors were doing the dirty work, Islamabad could keep its hands clean and point to the mess with full sympathy instead of becoming a target. And all the while Mumbai suffered…

Now the plan required a very visible ‘defensive’ mobilization of Pakistani military to thwart an ‘unnecessarily wanton and aggressive’ New-Delhi from pursuing foolish military plans. Hussein understood that the game was about time. A month or two and the initial Indian fury would lose steam, as it always had. If he and his men could weather the storm that was sure to follow in the days to come, they would come out ahead.

Wouldn’t that be a change? Hussein thought as he removed his glasses and cleaned the lenses with a small cloth.
raj.devan
BRFite
Posts: 106
Joined: 11 Aug 2016 06:14

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by raj.devan »

General Shakril Hussein looked up from his papers as the Pakistani Prime-Minister walked into his office.
So the Pakistani PM had to drive over from Islamabad's Blue Area all the way down to Army Gen HQ at Rawalpindi to meet with the CinC.

I see you're making a subtle statement about who really calls the shots in Pakistan. :D
asbchakri
BRFite
Posts: 374
Joined: 14 Sep 2007 11:20
Location: Chennai
Contact:

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by asbchakri »

I see Vivek active in all the other Dhagas, except his very own :(
vivek_ahuja
BRF Oldie
Posts: 2394
Joined: 07 Feb 2007 16:58

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by vivek_ahuja »

asbchakri wrote:I see Vivek active in all the other Dhagas, except his very own :(
A thousand apologies, saar. But didn't get enough access this weekend to push the next set of posts through. Will rectify this evening.
asbchakri
BRFite
Posts: 374
Joined: 14 Sep 2007 11:20
Location: Chennai
Contact:

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by asbchakri »

vivek_ahuja wrote:
asbchakri wrote:I see Vivek active in all the other Dhagas, except his very own :(
A thousand apologies, saar. But didn't get enough access this weekend to push the next set of posts through. Will rectify this evening.
Yeee :D

P.S. No need to apologies sir, u r doing us a favor. It is worth the wait. :)
narmad
BRFite
Posts: 226
Joined: 10 May 2005 09:47
Location: Mumbai
Contact:

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by narmad »

Jeff Head wrote: Thank you for your review, Raj, and your kind words.
Once again, thank you for your kind words.
A Small nitpick.

In India the PRESIDENT is kind of a ceremonial figurehead.
Our democracy follows the British style. Here the Prime Minister takes the decision [ not the current one ].
vivek_ahuja
BRF Oldie
Posts: 2394
Joined: 07 Feb 2007 16:58

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by vivek_ahuja »

Image

NEW DELHI
14TH MARCH + 2300 HRS


Basu took a deep breath as he got out of the car and picked up his suitcase on the seat next to him. Thanking his driver for being with him all day, he walked back into the office building. The place was still bustling with people, although the crowd was certainly lighter than before. Basu made the usual pleasantries to his subordinates working past their usual time collating the massive amounts of data coming in from Mumbai, Pakistan occupied Kashmir and from within Pakistan itself. He asked to be kept informed of all important material coming in despite the hour and then made his way back to his office down the corridor, loosening is tie as he did so.

He saw a man sitting on the seats across his assistant’s desk, which was now deserted for some reason. Basu saw that the man was sitting casually with his legs folded and reading some papers. His coat was on the backrest of an adjacent chair, the medals and other military insignia glistening in the lights of the corridor. Walking closer, Basu saw the man clearer…
“Ansari! You made it!”
Colonel Ansari looked up from his papers and smiled, removing his reading glasses. “Of course I made it!” He got up and shook Basu’s outstretched hand.
“Damn good to see you, old friend!” Basu said with a genuine smile on his face, and then looked around to see Ansari’s belongings set up on the chairs outside.
“But why the hell are you sitting here? Didn’t my assistant meet you here?” Basu asked as Ansari picked up his coat and papers from the chair.

“He had some family emergency to deal with, so I told him not to worry about me,” Ansari said as he removed his glasses and folded them before putting them in his coat pocket. “You don’t look too well either,” he added. “But I guess that goes for everybody around here tonight, eh?”
Basu’s face lost the smile as he motioned for Ansari to come into his office. Once there, Basu hung up his coat and walked behind the desk while Ansari took his seat at the couch, looking it over as though having met after so much time. Which was true, of course. The last time he had been here had been before and during the China war, briefing Basu, Chakri and other senior intelligence officials about his covert special-warfare teams deep inside Tibet. He had sat on this very couch and talked about deaths of Chinese soldiers, destruction of Chinese military equipment and losses encountered by the Tibetan rebels as well as his teams in the process. He had also shown them videos taken by specially deployed aerial-drone crews over southern and southwestern Tibet.

There used to be a small television set on the wall…Ansari looked around…and there it was!

“Everything as you remember it?” Basu said with a smile from across the desk, accurately judging his friend’s thoughts and feelings.
“Indeed it is!” Ansari said with a amused grunt as Basu fished in his desk drawer for his regular cigarette. As he found one and began looking for a match to light it, Ansari made himself comfortable on the couch.
“Small talk aside,” he said finally just as Basu scratched the matches and lit his cigarette, “I take it you aren’t hosting a social gathering tonight. At least not under the circumstances we find ourselves in.”

Basu moved the cigarette to the edge of his mouth and let out a puff of smoke as he leaned back in his leather seat. “I won’t be so harsh, Ansari!”
“Considering all that has happened since all of us were present in this room here,” Ansari said as he glanced around the room, “I didn’t think it was a good idea for us to ever meet again in public. Heck, had it not been for the official call I got from your assistant today, I would have been right about that for three years running. I was done with the work we did here when we closed out the Gephel and his Pathfinders. I have even got to liking being a regular operations guy at SOCOM!”

“You like it there?” Basu said, dropping the cigarette ash into the tray on his table.
“It has its moments,” Ansari said guardedly. Basu smiled at that.
“Oh come on, Ansari! You are not a ‘regular’ guy. Never had been.”
“No, you better believe it!” Ansari tried to counter, but then gave up and sighed…

“I thought so.” Basu replied.
“So what are we doing about today’s attack on Mumbai?” Ansari said in a serious tone. Basu lost his smile as well.
“I can’t go into the details, you understand?”
“Of course,” Ansari said seriously and meant it. Basu looked at the man straight in his eyes and then leaned forward on his seat, resting his arms on the desk.
“If I gave you the location of a high-value target behind enemy lines, could you and your guys go and grab him?”

Ansari didn’t reply for several seconds, considering the question. His eyes then lit up: “What kind of high-value…”
“A man.” Basu interjected.
“Do we know where he is?” Ansari asked next, his mind racing ahead.
“We will. Count on it,” Basu added confidently. Ansari leaned forward: “And you are talking to me…why? Surely there is enough brass at SOCOM headquarters to answer this question? Why the cloak and dagger stuff?”

Basu let out the cigarette smoke and crushed the cigarette in the tray, extinguishing it in the process: “Because our incompetent suck-ups in South-Block have a different play in mind. One that is loud, clear and ultimately pointless and unrewarding. And your bosses at SOCOM are going to be caught up in the mix of it for show-and-tell purposes soon enough. What I have, however, is a plan that is surgical and painful to those who carried out today’s strike on Mumbai.”

“A covert operation?” Ansari noted dryly, and Basu gave him a slight tilt of his head which could be interpreted either way. Ansari shook his head and got up from the couch and began to pace the room. After several seconds he turned to face Basu: “You never learn, do you? We barely got away with our lives carrying out the Pathfinder missions! Now you want to do it again? For what?”
“Quite simple, really,” Basu said and leaned back once again in his chair, testing Ansari’s patience. “If we don’t do this, the ******** who pulled off the strike in Mumbai will live to strike another day. The government does not realize it, but when they do what they want to do, we will be left looking quite toothless to our neighbors who, by the way, will only be too glad to help us in our endeavor.”

Ansari stopped his pacing and looked at the man, understanding the meaning of his words…
“What kind of support will I have? I can’t do this shit alone!”
“Oh, I don’t want you doing anything alone!” Basu replied. “I just want to know if you will lead it. Then I can make it happen for you to get your pick of men and equipment needed to carry out the job.”
The hell!” Ansari snapped. “How the hell are you going to arrange any of this? You don’t exactly head up SOCOM, buddy. The Army does!”
“Let’s just say I am not alone in thinking the way I do about our upcoming military response to today’s attack,” Basu noted dryly. Ansari saw the fire in the man’s eyes and knew it was no bluff. The decision was clearly in his hands and if he knew Basu at all, the man probably wanted a decision in this room, right now…
“When will this take place? What’s the timeline on this?” Ansari asked after several seconds of thought. His mind made up, and his words letting Basu know his decision without actually speaking it.

“The government will probably begin the show-and-tell operations within two weeks,” Basu speculated.
“That’s not much time,” Ansari noted.
“No it is not,” Basu conceded. “But isn’t it what you and your boys plan for, all the time?” The statement was delivered with a wicked smile. It’s response generated the same as Ansari picked up his coat and papers:

“I will get back to you.”
Vinit
BRFite -Trainee
Posts: 81
Joined: 01 Oct 2010 08:58

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by Vinit »

raj.devan wrote:I think the book gave a very real Indian pov in addition to a pov from every side in the conflict. Jeff does not portray any particular side as a villain, and thoroughly justifies the action of every side, especially in the case of the Chinese alliance.

.....
I just finished reading the 800 pages of Dragon's Fury, and frankly am not sure if it qualifies to be military fiction, let alone a scenario. It has extreme right-wing ideology (the USA stops all immigration, bans abortions, removes all gun control, prayer is made important, the head of CNN is sentenced to death for treason, all terrorist activity in the US is done by non-whites, and so on).

That forms major chunks of the book. Even letting that aside and looking at matters military, this book has flights of fancy instead of any semblance to reality. Everyone develops super-weapons and is able to deploy hundreds of them immediately; resources seem limitless - India's attack on the US 5th fleet involves 4+ squadrons of Bear and Badger bombers with many squadrons of frontline aircraft. Everything is in "hundreds" or "thousands" whether it is BMs, cruise missiles, bombers, or fighters. Even the action descriptions are more on the lines of "50 F-22s met 200 Su-30s in a furball, at the end there were 20 F-22s left and 40 SU-30s".

The economic and logistic aspects of war have not been considered, and the political ones seem contrived to the point of unreality. India and Pakistan and China coming together with Iran to fight the USA? Hmmm.

Jeff does have a good writing style, and the book flows seamlessly despite its length. I do wish he would use those skills in a better way, being more objective and not hitting the reader over the head so much with personal preferences ... he would make excellent reading.
Rahul M
Forum Moderator
Posts: 17168
Joined: 17 Aug 2005 21:09
Location: Skies over BRFATA
Contact:

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by Rahul M »

vivek, nice build up !

a nitpick, irrespective of their personal relationship, a Col. won't refer to a Sec(R) as buddy. not only is the later a much senior officer, equivalent to a 4star General, he will likely be much older as well.
vivek_ahuja
BRF Oldie
Posts: 2394
Joined: 07 Feb 2007 16:58

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by vivek_ahuja »

Rahul M wrote:a nitpick, irrespective of their personal relationship, a Col. won't refer to a Sec(R) as buddy. not only is the later a much senior officer, equivalent to a 4star General, he will likely be much older as well.
Yes, that is very much correct. Of course he won't under normal circumstances and certainly not when anybody else is around.

But at a 11 pm informal meeting between two colleagues who have worked together for years? Besides, not every Colonel gets promoted to General rank before getting old, no? :wink:
Rahul M
Forum Moderator
Posts: 17168
Joined: 17 Aug 2005 21:09
Location: Skies over BRFATA
Contact:

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by Rahul M »

I was assuming that a clearly competent person like Col. Ansari would not get stuck at that rank. ;)
vivek_ahuja
BRF Oldie
Posts: 2394
Joined: 07 Feb 2007 16:58

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by vivek_ahuja »

Rahul M wrote:I was assuming that a clearly competent person like Col. Ansari would not get stuck at that rank. ;)
Ah. The benefits of running covert special-warfare missions like Gephel and his Pathfinders, against the government wishes can stymie any competent man's career saar! Lest we forget what government hell-bent on vindictiveness can do to serving officers, no? :(
vivek_ahuja
BRF Oldie
Posts: 2394
Joined: 07 Feb 2007 16:58

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by vivek_ahuja »

Image

INDIAN AEROSPACE COMMAND
BANGALORE
14TH MARCH + 2345 HRS


Air-Marshal Malhotra sighed as he sat up on the couch and rolled his legs on to the floor, letting out a deep breath in the process. He rolled his head up to see his second-in-command, or 2IC, standing near the couch, his body silhouetted against the lights in the resting room of the operations center. Malhotra could see the Navy officer smiling despite his groggy eyes.

“Don’t you have better things to be doing than waking old men from their beloved sleep!” Malhotra said and then yawned. Rear-Admiral Sinha walked over to the small kitchen area in the room and picked up two cups of tea from the various kettles lined up. Malhotra saw that unlike himself, his colleague was immaculately dressed in his crisply ironed navy coats down to the golden stripes rank insignia.

Damn navy! Malhotra thought with a muffled grunt. They all have their suits molded in cast-iron in all likeliness…
He got up and grabbed his own coat lined up on the headrest of the couch as Sinha walked over with the two cups.

“Sorry to wake you up from your beauty sleep, old boy,” Sinha said with a crooked smile, “But things have been happening that need your attention rather quickly.”
“Good or bad?” Malhotra said as he sipped his tea. Sinha cocked his eyebrows in response: “Considering things, I am not sure what further bad can happen, no?”

That’s true…Malhotra thought as the hot drink began having its effect, though his eyes probably would still be bloodshot from the long and extremely busy day. Well, that can’t be helped…
“…Anyway,” Sinha continued as he walked over to the table where his papers were stacked. He put down the cup and removed a couple of files marked with red and black stripes along its borders. He handed it to Malhotra.

“What’s this?” Malhotra said as he opened the files and saw the title at the top of the page: ‘OVERHEAD IMAGERY REQUESTS, PRIORITY TASKING, AIR HEADQUARTERS, PRIORITY ZULU’. He glanced further down to see that the request came directly from the top brass of the Air-Force and was marked extremely urgent. Further down the page were a list of latitude and longitude coordinates for about a dozen locations. From the rough grids memorized to Malhotra now from the China war, he recognized the locations…

“Pakistan occupied Kashmir?” He said to Sinha who nodded silently.
“Sounds like the balloon is about to go up,” Sinha said as Malhotra re-read the tasking orders and timelines. “And it looks like your boys are going to go clean up the house across the line-of-control.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Malhotra said as he reached the last page of the file and then looked at Sinha: “Where’s the rest of this stuff?”
“That’s all they deemed for us to know,” Sinha noted dryly. Malhotra sighed and made a mental note to try and call up Air-Chief-Marshal Bhosale to find out more details. He then tossed the closed file back on the table.

“What’s our readiness on this? Keeping in mind our commitment to the disaster management teams in Mumbai?” He asked Sinha as both men collected their files and papers and prepared to head back into the operations room.

“Two birds,” Sinha noted with finality that left no doubt in Malhotra’s mind. “RISATs.”
“Okay,” Malhotra said as he reached the door for the operations center and turned to wait for his colleague to catch up to him. “Send out the tasking orders for the two birds you have marked and let’s find out what's at those coordinates that headquarters has sent us.”

“Yes sir!” Sinha said as Malhotra opened the door to instantly flood the sound-proof rest areas with the buzz and chatter of the operations center. Sinha walked out and Malhotra followed behind him, rubbing his eyes of whatever sleep there was left in them…
rohanldsouza
BRFite -Trainee
Posts: 16
Joined: 06 Jul 2008 19:12

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by rohanldsouza »

since we are on the topic of Pakistan and its shenanigans , just wanted to inform you on "The Karachi Deception" by Shatrujeet Nath.

Gripping tale & unputdownable , quite similar to Mathew Reilly's Novels (Scarecrow Series).

Available on Flipkart - the paper back is the real thing.
asbchakri
BRFite
Posts: 374
Joined: 14 Sep 2007 11:20
Location: Chennai
Contact:

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by asbchakri »

Vivek how is Cerberus coming along, any updates on the book release.

Also new posts please.
Mihir.D
BRFite
Posts: 171
Joined: 19 Oct 2007 08:50
Location: Land Of Zero :D !

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by Mihir.D »

Please update
vivek_ahuja
BRF Oldie
Posts: 2394
Joined: 07 Feb 2007 16:58

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by vivek_ahuja »

Image

LEH AIRBASE
LADAKH, INDIA
16TH MARCH + 1130 HRS


Ansari sat up straight in his seat as the aircraft shuddered after touching down on the runway. The turboprop engines groaned at full power as the aircraft began slowing down. Several seconds later the aircraft was rolling off the runway and headed towards the military tarmac. Ansari looked around and saw the usual suspects on a flight as typical as this one. There were the soldiers coming back to their units deployed in Kashmir, the odd government employees and even several Ladakhi civilians. All were sitting in the forward cargo cabin of the air-force Antonov AN-32 aircraft, communicating to each other via shouts above the din of the engine noise. Not Ansari, of course. He was sitting to the back of the cabin; his only company being the air-force warrant-officer who was the loadmaster on this particular flight from Chandigarh airbase. Ansari looked at the warrant officer sitting opposite from him in his green flight overalls and his earphones covering both ears as he listened to the cockpit radio chatter.

Ansari yawned. It had been a long two nights and a very early start to this day. But under the circumstances, there had been little choice in the matter. After his meeting with Basu two days ago, things had moved fast. Perhaps faster than Ansari would have liked, which was surprising even to him. Basu had delivered as he had promised. Ansari had found all his requests for personnel and equipment approved by SOCOM with the highest of authority. On the flight over from Chandigarh to here, he had finally had some time to review his thoughts and make objective decisions about the next steps. He had convinced himself that the broad authority given to him for the job at hand could not have come from anyone other than the star-ranked senior-brass at his parent command. So why the obtrusive secrecy? The answer to that had been obvious as it had been simple…

Deniability.

The job that he now held in his hands was black of the black. It had every potential of triggering a war if things didn’t go exactly as planned. But that wasn’t right, was it? After all, the entire Indian military was gearing up for the upcoming missions inside Pakistan occupied Kashmir. And if and when those missions went through, war might break out over the flimsiest of reasons. But there was also the hope that it won’t.

But if my mission goes awry, there will be no such hopes of avoiding all-out war…Ansari thought as he turned his head back and rested it against the bare metal skin of the aircraft fuselage. Hell, what’s new with that?

Ansari had overseen the Pathfinder missions inside Tibet with the aid of his field man and fellow Pathfinder, Lt-Colonel Gephel. The Pathfinder missions were themselves based on a firm foundation of revenge. Their design was not so much a sprint as a marathon. The idea was to make the Chinese bleed inside Tibet until such a point that they were willing to make concessions. And in that they were effective. In fact, they were too effective and ultimately had the net effect of driving both nations to war.

It had been a question that had kept Ansari awake for countless nights afterwards. He had never questioned his mission and strategic objective when he had acted as the liaison between Basu, Chakri and the others in South-Block in New-Delhi and Gephel and his Pathfinder teams out in the freezing snow and ice of southern Tibet. He had never flinched at the countless lists of death and destruction wrought upon by these missions on Chinese military forces. But the sudden, massive and precipitous Chinese attack on India had caught his conscious off-guard. The war that had resulted the deaths of tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians on both sides. Bhutan had been savaged with nuclear weapons. And northwestern China had suffered a similar fate.

Were all of these consequences?
Of my actions?


Ansari let out deep breath and shook his head to clear his thoughts as he heard the whining noise of the cargo ramp opening. He turned to see the bright sunlight reflecting off the concrete tarmac. Sunlight glistened off the shiny new ice patches on the concrete and a chillingly cold wind swept through the cabin, making every one of the passengers shiver. The loadmaster jumped off the ramp on the tarmac and Ansari prepared to do the same. He didn’t have to worry about personal belongings. He didn’t have any. His only concern was the army winter jacket of his and his beret. He was wearing a regular army beret today instead of his red one that indicated his special-forces lineage. No. That would only draw unnecessary attention and one never knew who was watching. Not when the whole of Kashmir was on edge…

He returned the salute from the warrant-officer at the base of the ramp and walked off, looking around the airbase. Around him the airbase was abuzz with military activity. He cocked his head upwards to see a bright blue morning sky reverberating with the thunder of Mig-29 fighters on air-defense duties. To his side, a pair of massive air-force C-17 transport aircraft were parked side by side, disgorging tons of cargo, vehicles and soldiers…

Not hard to guess our intentions, was it? Ansari thought and then grunted as he put on his beret, shielding his thinning white hair from the bitter cold winds. He realized that amongst all this activity lay an air of anonymity for himself. With the massive military force readiness being enhances in Kashmir, top brass were moving back and forth. If there was anybody in the pay of the Pakistanis watching the airfield for the arrivals and departures, he or she would have plenty to report. Amongst all that, a lowly Colonel could blend in without drawing any attention at all.

“Our enemies never learn,” a voice said calmly behind Ansari.
“And command doesn’t know any better!” Ansari replied almost on reflex and then smiled as he turned around. “Gephel! You old dog!”

The bearish Gephel caught Ansari in a hug that left the latter gasping. Ansari looked his friend over, dressed as he was in combat fatigues similarly lacking in special-forces insignia. He didn’t say anything about that. He didn’t have to.

“What brings you to these neck of the woods…uh, rocks?” Gephel said, still smiling. “Don’t see too many of you command folks out in the mud with the boys!”
“Yea, yea,” Ansari observed and then fished into his bulky winter coat pockets. He fished out a small box of sweets that he knew Gephel liked and tossed the box over to him. Gephel took it with a smile on his face and his eyes lit up.

“I thought you would have been missing these out here!” Ansari noted as Gephel wasted no time unpacking the small box. “You don’t know,” he said without looking away from his efforts to snap open the box, “how many air-force pilots I have bribed with favors to get them to get these back to this god-forsaken place for me!” Ansari smiled briefly and then looked around before speaking:
“Listen Gephel, we need to talk. Any place less open we can go to?”

“Absolutely!” Gephel said, at once becoming serious. He waved to the small Army Gypsy utility vehicle parked on the tarmac next to the AN-32 and began walking to it. Both men jumped on and Gephel accelerated the vehicle off the tarmac and towards the army base near the airfield.

“So what’s going on?” He said while driving past a convoy of trucks. “I mean beside the obvious, of course!”
“What have you heard?” Ansari asked above the noise of the vehicle engine. “About all this.”
“Only what the brass deems itself to tell us. And the regular swathe of rumors over drinks in the mess, of course!” Gephel noted without taking his eyes off the road.
“Of course!”
“But mainly that we are going to be handing major pain-in-a-can to the Pakis for what they did to Mumbai. Some guys are even talking of unrestricted Ops across the Rubicon!”
Ansari sighed as he watched Gephel talk. He missed being in the field.
“But what do you think is about to happen?” Ansari continued.

“Nothing,” Gephel responded dryly. “Same shit, different day. We mobilize, they mobilize. The winter doesn’t help and ensures that mountain passes remain closed. The brass reports the same to the political chiefs in Delhi and the whole thing is shelved while diplomacy get a new life. And the folks in Islamabad have a good laugh all through and through.”

Gephel pulled over the vehicle next to the mess of a Ladakh Scouts unit that was moving into the region. It was as anonymous a place as could be found. Gephel then turned to Ansari: “And until you called up to tell me you were coming, I would have remained convinced that I was correct in my deductions.”

“But not anymore?” Ansari noted with a smile creeping at the corner of his mouth.
“Not anymore! So what do you have for me?”

“Something to make your hair stand on its end!” Ansari said with a smile as both men walked into the deserted mess room and headed outside into the rocky garden at the base of the snow-covered mountains that bracketed the airfield. Ansari took a half hour to explain his plans to Gephel, who nodded silently until his colleague had finished his brief and laid out his plans…
“…Naturally, we cannot be going on this ourselves.” Ansari concluded. Gephel finally raised his eyebrow: “And why not?”

Ansari shook his head: “No chance. And humping over these mountains here is a young man’s game. That leaves us two old geese out. I want your expertise from the Pathfinder missions but you are to go nowhere near the Op!”
“Can you get anybody we need within SOCOM for this operation?”
“Give me a name and I will have him deputed. The powers that lord over us simple soldiers have given me broad authority to acquire whoever we need. Within limits of course!” Ansari said, and then peered at Gephel. “Why? Who did you have in mind?”

“There is this young Major I met over at Vairengte teaching newly entered special-forces officers on high-altitude special-warfare tactics and helping to enhance their program with his wartime Bhutanese experience. You will know him. The guy led his team into combat against the Chinese Highland Division forces north of Thimpu during the initial phases of the Bhutanese theater. His small force worked with Warlord and his commanders to hold off until the Paras could secure Thimpu.”

“Oh, I think I know this guy,” Ansari said as he tried to recollect information on personnel at SOCOM. “Didn’t his team get chewed up over there? Himself included?”
“You blame him?” Gephel noted dryly. “A nuclear explosion will do that to a man, you know. He got chopped up good and proper and walked out of Bhutan with a severe leg wound. And only three others from his team survived. But he’s recovered now. I met the boy before I headed over here. He’s perfect for what we need. Grab him before some other task-force does!”

Ansari grunted and then smiled, more so at the ease with which Gephel had accepted his task without actually saying it. And also because he realized that his special-warfare team had already begun to grow.

It was now no longer theoretical.
Kersi D
BRFite
Posts: 1444
Joined: 20 Sep 2000 11:31

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by Kersi D »

Mr Vivek Ahuja
Just got CHIMERA, a few days ago. Went rapidly the first time. Went quickly the second time. Now for the third time trying to read word-by-word.

A suggestion. Please include some relevant maps in FENIX to make it more intersting.

Kersi
vivek_ahuja
BRF Oldie
Posts: 2394
Joined: 07 Feb 2007 16:58

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by vivek_ahuja »

Kersi saar!

Many thanks for your compliments on the book. :)

And your note about the maps has been noted saar. A lot of requests for the same have come through. Will take that into account for Fenix and Cerberus!

-Vivek
Last edited by vivek_ahuja on 20 Feb 2014 10:49, edited 1 time in total.
vivek_ahuja
BRF Oldie
Posts: 2394
Joined: 07 Feb 2007 16:58

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by vivek_ahuja »

Image

BEIJING
CHINA
16TH MARCH + 1430 HRS


“It is not our fight. Isn’t that what they said to us three years ago?” Wencang said as he kept walking. General Chen kept his pace alongside him as others in the corridor swept aside to make way for the two senior-most officials of the Central Military Commission. The walls on either side of the corridor were covered with red curtains and portraits of past commanders and leaders of the communist party of China. Wencang didn’t bother dropping a glance on either of them. He was in this building far too many times a day for it to matter anymore. But this time he did stop at one of the last portraits before his office. It was of his predecessor: Peng.

Peng had been killed three years ago as a result of a deadly Indian ICBM attack on one of the last days of the war with India. He had died along with a host of other senior party officials and several senior military commanders when their arrival at the national command center west of Beijing had been pre-empted by the Indians. Wencang and Chen had survived that strike because they had not been with that group. In fact, they had been put outside that group by Peng himself, although the reasons for him doing so were far from benign…

You ba$tard! Wencang thought as he stared at the silent portrait of the man hanging on the wall in front of him. You wrought what you had sown!

Wencang sighed and turned to Chen, who raised an eyebrow at his commander, guessing his thoughts. Wencang shook his head and started walking again towards his office, with Chen in tow. The large hall outside his office door was occupied only by the desks of his office adjutants. The red coloration of the various drapes and carpets in the room were hard to miss. The Lt-Colonel who was in charge of the team of assistants immediately got up from his seat, sliding his chair back with a grinding noise, and saluted as Wencang walked by. Chen returned the Lt-Colonel’s salute. Wencang didn’t bother…

“So what do those ba$tards want, anyway?” Wencang said as he walked into his office and removed the uniform coat. Chen waited and looked as the Lt-Colonel closed the door to the office behind him, leaving the two men alone.
“What the beggars always want,” Chen said. His eyes followed Wencang as the latter walked around the desk and watched the snow glistening on the grass outside the window.
“Satellite intel?” Wencang said after consideration. Chen nodded.
“Indeed.”
“What else?” Wencang asked, fishing into his pocket for his cheap cigarettes that he loved. He had picked up the habit when he had been posted at one of the Mongolian border PLAAF airbases so many decades ago. The last decade had accelerated the habit towards it logical end: he now coughed after every complete cigarette and wondered whether the next one would be his last…

“…and additional ammunition supplies to beef up their war reserves,” Chen concluded. Wencang turned to face his colleague and realized he had missed whatever the man had been saying. He looked at Chen and caught his glance. Both men smiled and Chen tossed the file on his massive wooden desk: “You can read the list later if you want. Nothing overtly unorthodox in there. The real question”, he pointed a finger at the closed file, “is whether or not we should provide them any of what’s in here. Not after their betrayal during the war!”

“Betrayal, Chen?” Wencang said as he turned away from the window and moved into his seat behind the desk, extinguishing the cigarette along the way. “You mean self-preservation, no? Isn’t that what all animals do? Look out for themselves?”
“Very well then,” Chen conceded, “like animals. Self-preservation. The point is, every gut in my body wants to tell their ambassador and their military attaché to go f@ck themselves!”
“The point is,” Wencang said as he grabbed the file and leaned back as he opened its contents, “that like all animals, our friends in Rawalpindi did what they felt they had to do to preserve themselves during our war with India. They helped where they could, but drew the line very clearly when they saw that the war was not going according to our estimates.”

“So how do you explain their current behavior?” Chen asked as he crossed his arms. “Surely this strike against Mumbai is not going to be taken lightly by New-Delhi? Hussein is quite mad if he thinks otherwise!”

“From his perspective, he is quite sane, Chen. He is using the opportunity given to him by a weakened Indian military and economy, a weakened Indian government that has let go of the key individuals that helped secure their survival in their war with us and a Prime Minister in New-Delhi who is more inclined for peace even when presented with conflicting evidence regarding Pakistani intentions.” Wencang said as he read through the items in the file sent over by the Pakistanis via their military attaché under the most privileged manner to the Chinese high command. Wencang finished reading the list and closed the file, putting it back on the table. He then looked at Chen and continued:

“General Hussein has made his bets on the outcome to this plan of his. In that respect we can play along as well. If the net result is the further weakening of our enemies through a bloody war with a basket case like Pakistan, why should we get in the way?”
“Agreed!” Chen said.
“There is nothing at all for us to lose in any of this. My friend, I trust you to take care of this with the utmost discretion, of course.”
“Understood.”
“Very well then,” Wencang said as he glanced at the file on the desk. After a few seconds of silent consideration, he scowled at the file:

“Consider all of these requests from Rawalpindi approved! Your command will receive its orders from this office before the end of this day. Time to throttle up the pressure around the Indian necks. Make it happen!”
sudhan
BRFite
Posts: 1157
Joined: 01 Jul 2009 17:53
Location: Timbuktoo..

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by sudhan »

Nice build up, Ahuja saar! Can't wait for the action to begin :)
aditp
BRFite
Posts: 448
Joined: 15 Jul 2008 07:25
Location: Autoland

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by aditp »

Will the SF guys interdict the shipment? That will be a whole new twist :)
Mihir.D
BRFite
Posts: 171
Joined: 19 Oct 2007 08:50
Location: Land Of Zero :D !

Re: Possible Indian Military Scenarios - XIII

Post by Mihir.D »

They should just sink the ships
Locked