SKIES ABOVE THE LINE OF CONTROL
KASHMIR
19TH MARCH + 1545 HRS
“We have inbounds!”
The young air force officer sitting at his console didn’t flinch as he noted the two pop ups on his screen. The on board computer within the belly of the Indian ERJ-145 airborne radar aircraft went to work. It classed the inbounds as two southbound fighters and provided the estimated speed and altitude in abbreviations next to the inverted “Vee” on the operator consoles. The officer staring at the screen simply had to read off the data into his comms mouthpiece to relay the same to his boss, overseeing the half dozen people on board from over their shoulders.
“What do we have?” the Mission Controller said as he walked up behind the operator, looking at the screen over his right shoulder. The operator moved his eyes to the side panel of the screen interface to see the radar auto-classification for the aircraft type. With a vector inbound from Skardu, there was little to guess…
“F-16s, scrambled out of Skardu.”
“Well, that didn’t take them long,” the MC said and then straightened himself. After a second he turned to his right to another operator: “Is Rambler Flight still on station?”
“Roger that, sir!” Rambler was a flight of three Mig-29s of No. 28 Squadron out of Leh.
“How long before they are bingo on fuel?”
“Twenty minutes.”
“Good enough,” the MC noted bearishly. “Bring them up.”
Rambler had been on station for very little time. But as with the Mig-29s of all types, the Indian ones were very low on endurance. They left a nasty trail of smoke in their wake and had to be refueled often to maintain them on station. The current flight would not be making it home on their own fuel if they decided to go head to head with the Pakistani F-16s.
Then next choice would have been a flight of four Mig-21 Bisons out of Pathankot to the south. But they were farther away and also less capable than the upgraded Mig-29s when compared with the Block-52 F-16s armed with AMRAAMs. And if the long-range missile threat was replaced with combat “in the merge”, commonly known as dog-fighting, the Mig-29s would run circles around the F-16 of any Block model. Despite its fuel-guzzling nature, the Fulcrum was a bruiser of a fighter. Besides, the Bisons would be running into their own fuel and endurance problems. At least the Mog-29s could refuel mid-air…
“Do we have a tanker up here?” The MC asked over his comms, as he carefully made his way further up the cabin. The operators and the consoles inside the Embraer ERJ-145 aircraft took up a lot of space. And the aircraft was small to begin with. The Indian modification to this aircraft had basically taken an ERJ-145 and fitted it out with some of the most advanced hme-grown radar and electronic warfare systems. The result was an aircraft bristling with antennae, empennages and bulges. And a cabin that was crowded, to say the least.
“No sir.” A voice on his comms said. “But we do have one on the ground at Srinagar.”
“Then scramble it! Our Fulcrum boys are going to get really thirsty soon enough.”
“Roger!”
The tanker in question was an IL-78 from the No. 78 Mid-Air-Refueling Squadron or MARS. It was the IAF’s only mid-air refueling aircraft squadron and was equipped with half a dozen IL-78s. These aircraft were basically modifications of the IL-78 platform that carried Israeli refueling pods. The IAF was extremely short-handed on tankers and it was something that had been glaringly visible for the last decade. But because the situation had not been rectified, the IAF was left very short on tankers during any major air war. The result was that the Mission Controllers on board the airborne radar aircraft had to stage-manage the deployment of tankers and decide which aircraft had priority over others for refueling.
Not all refueling needs could be met.
Those that didn’t get their requirements met were forced to break station and head home, regardless of how bad the threat situation in the skies might be…
The MC sighed and made his way into the cockpit cabin where he found the two pilots and the flight engineer scanning the skies. Compared with the cramped, hot and relatively windowless interiors of the main cabin further back, the cockpit was very comfortable and offered a bright panoramic view of the snowcapped and sunlit Himalayas from a bird’s eye view.
“You guys aware of the situation?” The MC asked the pilots, who turned to face him momentarily and then went back to scanning the skies for activity. He knew they were informed. The data fusion between the radar computer of the early warning radar and all cockpits of all Indian aircraft in the skies here was complete. If something could not be sent via datalink, it was made available via voice comms. The flight crew was well aware of the situation.
“We are.” The senior pilot said without looking away.
“So what’s our exit strategy?” The MC asked.
“If the buggers make a beeline for us, I am breaking pattern and diving for the south. Pike flight with their Sukhois are tagged to run interference.”
The MC nodded agreement. There was precedence for this, of course. The IAF had lost one of its ERJ-145s over the border between Sikkim and Tibet during the last days of the war with China. That had happened because a regiment of Chinese Su-27s had decided to make mincemeat out of the dangerous Indian early warning aircraft. In that they had been successful despite the IAF surging as many fighters it could to get in between and provide interference. The aircraft had been shot down in exchange for large Flanker losses for the Chinese. But it had underscored the point for the surviving Indian pilots and crews who manned these early warning aircraft:
They were always the main target for the enemy.
Indeed, the IAF had done the same to the Chinese 76TH Airborne Command and Control Regiment during the war. And it was expected that the Pakistanis had learnt from it as well. They had operated closely with their Chinese brethren flying the ZDK-03 ‘Karakoram Eagle’ early warning aircraft over the skies of occupied Kashmir. So it was not hard to guess that they had paid attention to the losses incurred by their allies during the war…
Which begs the question: where is that airborne radar aircraft of theirs? The MC thought. His thoughts were interrupted a second later as his headset opened up:
“Detecting atmospheric bounced signals from a long-range radar!”
Speak of the devil…He brought up the headset from around his neck and put it over his ears, covering it. Simultaneously he turned away from the awe inspiring view from the cockpit and headed back into the cabin.
“Range?” He asked as he walked past the operators to the console where the electronic warfare officer sat.
“Over the horizon. But heading southbound.”
One look at the screen info gave the MC what he wanted: the source azimuth.
“Our Gilgit bird?” The EW officer asked as he turned over his shoulder to face the MC. The latter, grunted and smiled. It was like a game of chess. These were all set-piece moves in three dimensional space. The chessboard was the Himalayas.
“Of course,” he replied. “Both sides are setting up their chess pieces on the board. And
that,” he jabbed his finger on the screen showing the source azimuth of the PAF airborne radar aircraft, “is the other side’s queen taking her place on it!”
“Rambler is taking position on BARCAP, sir!” another operator said nearby. The MC turned to face the man as the EW operator went back to his tasks.
“They have the two Paki birds acquired?”
“Roger!” The operator replied sharply.
“Good. Tell Rambler leader to keep his flight on a short leash. No need for antics here that may snowball on us. He is not weapons free until I say so! Understood?”
“
Wilco!”
As the operators went to work, the MC wondered how he was supposed to take the initiative in an air-war where the other side was being handed the same by the Indian government. Until twenty-four hours ago there had been very little PAF presence hard-deployed inside occupied Kashmir. Sure there were constant flights of Mirage-IIIs and even some older model F-16s over the line of control but these were being staged from airbases inside Pakistan proper. The amount of time it took to fly from these airbases into Kashmir meant that a proper window of opportunity existed for the Indians to strike from their airbases located much closer to the area inside Kashmir. By the time the Pakistanis could have reacted, it would have been all over. But because New-Delhi had stated that its intentions prematurely, the PAF had picked up on the gist of the Indian plans and within hours had deployed fighters to temporary airbases at Skardu and Gilgit. And now this is where they would stay until the threat of Indian action dissipated. As such, they now represented a blocking force that would have to be swept aside before the strike packages could go through.
If they ever do! The MC reminded himself. He was not privy to what the senior brass was now telling the civilian leaders in light of these developments. But he shuddered to think of what all the civilian leaders might do. The Chinese were making noise now to the east based on what the latest intelligence information said. All in all, the stage was being set to force India into inaction. Would they do it? The stupidity of their elected leaders didn’t help.
Like most men in the unit, the MC knew people and relatives in Mumbai who had been forced to leave the city as a result of the chaos there. He had been forced to relieve some of his men from operations as a result of their mental anguish. The post-attack devastation had gripped the soul of the nation over the past days and morale had severely dropped. As a military commander, the morale of his men was a factor that he rarely, if ever, swept aside.
But if the Indian military was forced to sit
this one out, as it had been forced to do in the past after
every major terrorist attack, he feared the stress would break his men. And it would be followed soon after by the country.
And
that worried him more than anything the Pakistanis and the Chinese could muster against him on the battlefield…