Bharat Rakshak

Vivek Saar!

Too Good!!! Felt like jumping in my office going pew-pew!!

Please tie a nimbu & mirchi to your hands!!

^+1

drones - may be..

satellite - there is nothing called real-time unless one has a fleet of satellites dedicated for this purpose (not sure how many low earth sats are needed for this). geo sats can be stationary wrt earth, but they are so faraway that they dont have enough resolution.

Also what about inserting Ghataks/LRRPs a the night prior to kick-off to tag the Artillery units and provide real time recon?

Disappointed to see no coordination and no use of other assets
Where is the artillery?
Where is smerch / pinaka?
Where is helicopter support to suppress enemy?
No drones?
No special forces?
No turret mounted artillery?
Needless tension as battlefield awareness is not available.
This is supposed to be a battle not a demo for Arjun.
Please take my comments in good spirit and work out a wholistic view involving all assets available.
Airforce missing or did I miss the mission of the mig 27s.
Lovely to read but needs tweaking.
Take this as a fan's input.

VKumar wrote:Disappointed to see no coordination and no use of other assets
Where is the artillery?
Where is smerch / pinaka?
Where is helicopter support to suppress enemy?
No drones?
No special forces?
No turret mounted artillery?

Big difference between simplistic theory and practice. No battle in the history of human warfare has ever been the kind of chess board type setups that theory recommends (based on your above questions).

Things go wrong in war. Get used to it. In fact, that is exactly what the commanders are taught to handle. It doesn't matter if there is a theoretical solution to every problem in war. What matters is how they handle events driven by mistakes and confusion. The chaos of war, if you pardon the cliche.

People command stuff. Mistakes are made. Not every commander is up to the task. Artillery may not be in place because of delays. Air force might be busy with an enemy counterattack somewhere. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Speaking with serving and retired personnel, the one thing I have been made to understand very clearly is that everything and anything that can go wrong in a battle, usually does. Nature of war onlee.

This is supposed to be a battle not a demo for Arjun.

And how would the eye view of the commander of an Arjun task force be any different than from his tanks and his immediate vicinity? Is he likely to physically see everything going on? Every airstrike? Every spec ops mission out of his line of sight?

... and work out a wholistic view involving all assets available.

Why? So that I can leave the descriptions of the chaos of the unit level commanders and go back to my 30,000 feet view because its painful to read within the mud and dirt?

Look, I understand your feedback, so please don't think otherwise. However, if I wanted to write about generals commanding the war, it would be a different book. This one is about people.

Hey Vivek

vivek_ahuja wrote: It had been struck by Indian artillery two hours ago and was deserted by now. A small column of BMP-IIs from the Trishul force had already reached its perimeters after Rhino had arrived on scene. That column of BMP-IIs would secure and hold that position to provide security for the northern flank of the breach point.
The border post west of the breach point was more in Kulkarni’s direct path and had not been reconnoitered by Indian forces except for airborne drones launched by Steel-Central.

This border post was Kulkarni’s first objective over Pakistani soil.

“Rhino-one to Trishul-actual. We have one tank immobilized three kilometers east of your position on way to waypoint Baker. Also one casevac needing medical assistance. Suggest you get some of your boys up here. Over.”
“Trishul-actual copies. Standby for support. Out.”

When i read the second time more carefully, we do have the artillery and the drones, but their one liner mention got lost somewhere in the anticipation
of the Rhino fight .
There is no hardcore BRF build up to the Rhino breach.
The Rhinos provide the oomp factor, the glamour. But can you please write something more about Trishul Task force

vivek_ahuja wrote: “Rhino-one here, Trishul. We see you. Weapons on hold. Requesting sit-rep. Over.”
“Mines, Rhino-one. Anti-personnel and anti-tank. Three-hundred meter depth to our north and south. The Pakis went overboard on this one. Almost as if they were expecting us! Makes me feel very comfortable knowing that. My boys have secured four lanes through the field and have established a small bridgehead beyond. You are good to go. Over.”

About how they secured the lanes .

And a bit more from Steel-Central on the planning of this breach.
I understand that may be you don't want to stretch the story too much .

rkhanna wrote:

drones - may be..

satellite - there is nothing called real-time unless one has a fleet of satellites dedicated for this purpose (not sure how many low earth sats are needed for this). geo sats can be stationary wrt earth, but they are so faraway that they dont have enough resolution.

Also what about inserting Ghataks/LRRPs a the night prior to kick-off to tag the Artillery units and provide real time recon?

Yup. Spec ops are there. So are the drones, Counter battery systems as well as airstrikes. I kinda leave cookie-crumbs on all this inside the scenes . Look up the comments in the scene regarding "Ferrite-actual", the Mig-27s, the drone info being provided by Steel central regarding enemy forces and friendly recon troops.

But also bear in mind the timeline onlee. The entire last two scenes are based over a 1+ hour timeline. Things don't happen instantaneously onlee.

narmad wrote:
When i read the second time more carefully, we do have the artillery and the drones, but their one liner mention got lost somewhere in the anticipation
of the Rhino fight .
...
But can you please write something more about Trishul Task force
...
About how they secured the lanes .
...
And a bit more from Steel-Central on the planning of this breach.

Pliss to be patient onlee.

More to follow. This story isn't complete.

Vivek Sir; you posting after a bit long has opened flood gates of request \ comments - do take it easy

your fans just need more of you and hence all this comments... go with your flow as usual

Do what you like. This is supposed to be fun for you too, not just us

quote]Yup. Spec ops are there. So are the drones, Counter battery systems as well as airstrikes. I kinda leave cookie-crumbs on all this inside the scenes . Look up the comments in the scene regarding "Ferrite-actual", the Mig-27s, the drone info being provided by Steel central regarding enemy forces and friendly recon troops.

But also bear in mind the timeline onlee. The entire last two scenes are based over a 1+ hour timeline. Things don't happen instantaneously onlee.[/quote]

Sir,, Please feel free to all my doodlings...just me indulgding in my Hollywood fueled day dreaming

ramana wrote:For me four different govts(Congress, NDA-1, UPA and NDA-2) have decided not to declassify the report for reasons of state.
And that is good enough.

If its was political and the stated goal of NDA-2 is "Congress mukth Bharat" it would have been declassified.

So its more than COngress involved.

I tend to agree with svinayak that 1962 was a gambit to draw the Chinese out of the FSU alliance.
India paid the price for ending the Cold War.

In a way Vivekji's previous scenario is replay of 1962 & current (this) scenario is 1965.

Only 1 post....

Vivek Sir, Hope you are in good health. Now that the WCup is over nothing else to prevent the tanks from rolling

ISLAMGARH ROAD BREACH POINT
THE THAR DESERT
DAY 1 + 0815 HRS

“Up you come, you brute!” Major “Ferrite” Subramanian said as he watched the lead Tatra 8x8 trucks pitched up on the sandy embankment of the road; its engines groaning under their power as the front wheels lifted into the air on the power. The driver pressed the accelerator to bring the vehicle forward and it landed back on all eight wheels and tossed a bunch of mud and sand backwards. The combat-engineers guiding the traffic off the mine-cleared lanes and on to the road pulled their arms up into a cross when all eight wheels cleared the sloped embankment walls. That was the sign for the driver that their vehicle was clear on the road and free to maneuver. The other Tatra vehicles were doing the same.

Subramanian squinted in the sunlight blazing into his eyes and walked back to his parked Gypsy. His radio operator was sitting in the cloth-covered rear cabin with an embankment of radios.
“Get me Steel-central.”
The radio operator pulled a phone-like speaker off the radio panel and checked the comms: “Ferrite to Steel-central, over.”
“Steel-central copies. Reading you five-by-five. Over.”
Subramanian took the speaker from his radioman:
“Steel-central, this is Ferrite-actual. Be advised, Ferrite is clearing the breach point and heading into murky waters.”

“Roger. Advise you hurry, Ferrite! We are getting hammered west of you! Out.” The link was replaced with static. The abruptness caught Subramanian by surprise. He looked at his headset in surprise as though it were a person and then handed it back to the radioman who kept his expressions neutral.

“I guess they want us to hurry.” Subramanian frowned. It wasn’t his fault the Pakistani artillery guns were located outside the effective operating range of his systems. He had told the Division commander that this was bound to happen. The Pakistanis were smart enough to deploy their crown jewels further to the rear, just outside the range of the forward deployed Indian counter-battery systems. His mobile BEL Weapon-Locating-Radars, or “Welars”, as they were called locally, had a theoretical instrumented range in excess of practical ranges. He knew to deploy his radars with potential targets within the smaller practical ranges rather than the longer theoretical ones. But somebody at Division HQ had overridden his suggestions and placed him well inside Indian defense lines to protect him against Pakistani air attacks. Well, that was all fine and good, but what purpose was he to serve with his radars if they were outside the detection range of target?

It had been simple numbers. Command had placed his units a few kilometers inside Indian lines. Rhino was now five kilometers west of that line. And the Pakistani guns were about twenty kilometers west of Rhino! With an effective range of about twenty-five kilometers, how was he supposed to detect anything?

So when the Pakistani shells began raining down, he had found his trucks in the long convoy of vehicles making it through the breach lanes instead of being of any help in destroying the enemy gun batteries. And all through that time, the Indian counter-battery missile systems sat in waiting for targets…

“Somebody seriously fu@ked up at command!” He growled as he put on his sunglasses and got into the front seat of the Gypsy next to the driver, motioning him to drive on. The latter folded the paper maps in his hands into neat squares so that only the next location and the nearby grids were visible on the top-most square of the folded map. He put it on the dashboard before attending to the gears.

The vehicle accelerated off the nearby shrubs it had been waiting in near the road. Subramanian held on to the vehicle frame as it pitched up and got on the Islamgarh road just in front of his assembled convoy of vehicles. Subramanian looked back from the side of his vehicle to see the half-dozen Tatra vehicles and several normal army trucks plus other Gypsy vehicles with armed soldiers revving up to follow up behind him. He then turned back to his driver:

“You know the location we are going to?”

“Yes sir. Two kilometers west from that destroyed Pakistani outpost you see coming up the road. Rhino moved through here an hour or so ago. Mechanized convoys from Trishul are already ahead of us on this road to the location mentioned to help a disabled Rhino tank. We go three hundred meters north from there.”

“And find a place there to set up,” Subramanian finished for his driver. He saw the black smoke bellowing from the abandoned Pakistani outpost up the road. Further on the horizon he could make out other columns of smoke from where Rhino had overrun the Pakistani infantry units. There were also columns of light-brown sandy clouds heading up into the blue skies from Trishul units ahead…

“Good. How long?”
“Ten minutes if we race through!” The driver offered.
“Do it.”

BATTLE OF ISLAMGARH ROAD
DAY 1 + 0830 HRS

“Be advised Rhino-one…” Kulkarni pulled himself away from his sights and closed his eyes to concentrate on the incoming radio transmissions above the sounds of his own tank engaged in combat. “…incoming Pakistani armor forces due north, three kilometers! Battalion strength. Over.”

“Rhino copies all!” Kulkarni shouted just as the gunner let loose another main gun round.

“Say again, Rhino. Steel-central does not copy your last!”

Goddamn it…Kulkarni let out a silent curse and repeated: “Rhino copies all, Steel-central! We are moving to engage! Out.” He then changed frequencies: “Rhino-two, you have the ball here. Finish these b@stards. Rhino-four, move up the road another two kilometers and lock it down. Rhino-two will mop up and merge with you. Rhino-three, you are with us. Disengage and form up on me! We are heading north!”

As the comms became alive with affirmatives, Kulkarni ignored it and opened his eyes and then swiveled his ABAMS screen around as the turret shuddered again from a main gun round. They were just about done mopping up the Pakistani convoy of trucks and M-113 armored personal carriers that they had run into over here. The latter had been taken completely by surprise by the rapidity of the Indian advance and had not gotten enough time to react.

Too bad for them.

Kulkarni had other things to worry about now. The Pakistanis were now beginning to realize the severity of what was unfolding on the Islamgarh road and Kulkarni could only surmise that they were scared stiff by its implications. And so they were reacting in force. Steel-central had been noting the constant arrival of armored columns from Bahawalpur to the north and Shadadkot to the south. But there was a time and distance gap between the two locations and that meant that they would arrive in theater at different times. That was fine with Kulkarni, for it meant that instead of having to break up his strength into two, he could keep it combined and swing north and smash the Bahawalpur forces before pivoting south and taking on the much weaker Shadadkot axis. All the while continuing to move west towards his strategic objective…

The ABAMS screen showed him what he needed to see. The green units marked out by Steel-central to show the inbound Pakistani armored battalion was now north of him. His other tank commanders were seeing what he saw. And that made it easier for him to swivel his entire force without massive chaos within his formations. On cue, he felt the chassis of the tank swiveling north even though the gunner kept the turret aligned with his targets to the west. That was the power of the Arjun Fire-Control-System over all of the other Russian tanks in the Indian arsenal. The driver, gunner and tank commander were operating independently within the same turret without causing difficulties for one another. It may sound trivial, but under fire, it meant the difference between life and death.

Between victory and defeat.

Forty-eight Arjun tanks turned north and accelerated across the desert, adding to the already massive dust cloud that was enveloping the sector in addition to the columns of black smoke. The other tanks continued to rampage past the Pakistani survivors to the west. Within a few minutes the Arjuns heading north had aligned their turrets to match the direction and were looking for enemy tanks as the drivers pushed them through the desert sands…

“All right, gentlemen. This is where metal meets metal!” Kulkarni said over the comms. “So far we have crushed and rolled over all enemy defenses on the border. I guarantee the Pakistani high command is shaking in their boots on what is happening out here. On what we represent! So they are sending in their best to take us on. The enemy 1ST Armored Division is moving to engage us. Makes no difference to me. We will crush them all! Take no prisoners! Rhino-actual out!”

Kulkarni looked away from his sights to see the soot covered faces of his loader and gunner smiling at him. The gunner turned back to see through his sights. The loader didn’t need a cue. He pulled out a anti-armor Sabot round from the on-board storage and slid it into the main-gun breech. The latter loaded with a metallic clang.

Thank You, Vivek Sir. 02 posts. Is this battle of tanks developing in to some LCH action too? I will wait to find out.

HI Vivek,

Is it possible to represent the battle thru map? Not an absolute necessity but maybe helps readers to visualize the battle in a more effective manner.I have read some books where they use lot of pictures/diagrams to explain the situation to readers.

N.B: If you think the above suggestion will cause delays in your posts,please ignore them completely.
I love your posts and wait for them eagerly.

Regards,
Rohan

Vivek sir; missing your post from 10 days now

He is busy in forming Interim Govt in Isloo after a comprehensive defeat of erstwhile Bakis in 15 days war and epic tank battle leading to decimation of Ist Corps at Mangala and abject surrender of GHQ at Channapindi and incorporation of territory as Union Terriorty.There is scramble from old hogs to Lt Guv Post but Gen BS is frontrunner while senior IAmSorry Type Officers gunning for Adviser post and other plum posts. Wait for dispatches from the field later when runner arrives.

Vivek

you doing okay healthwise ?

Vivek Sirjee, please get well and come back soon!

Vivek Sir Lahore aur kitna door?

Vivek Sir, Hope you are in good health. Waiting for the Arjuns to roll towards Lahore.

rohan.chandel wrote:HI Vivek,

Is it possible to represent the battle thru map? Not an absolute necessity but maybe helps readers to visualize the battle in a more effective manner.I have read some books where they use lot of pictures/diagrams to explain the situation to readers.

N.B: If you think the above suggestion will cause delays in your posts,please ignore them completely.
I love your posts and wait for them eagerly.

Regards,
Rohan

Hello All,

I created Google Maps overlay to provide some visual sense of the battle map scene along with Target city/roads. Target city is "Rahim Yar Khan" to the left corner of the map.

Here are the Google Map coordinates for opening the location in Google Maps.. https://www.google.com/maps/@28.0099021,70.6002573,10z

Vivek please correct me if I misrepresented the battle scene/location...

Nice to get a visual sense while we eagerly wait for Vivek.
Hope all is well with him.

Thanks for the maps!!!!

Long time Vivek................................>
Hope he is ok.

Hi Vivek Saar - Hope all is good. "Patiently" waiting for your return.

In the meantime sharing the below link which has interesting write-ups on Flanker air manoeuvring and tactics using its agility. Maybe helpful in your scenarios

http://in.rbth.com/blogs/2014/08/24/fli ... 37765.html

^^^^^^

I gather from Vivek's FB page that he is recuperating from a shoulder injury and that may be the reason for his long absence.

Wishing speedy recovery Vivek, get well soon!

I gather from Vivek's FB page that he is recuperating from a shoulder injury and that may be the reason for his long absence.

Wishing speedy recovery Vivek, get well soon!

Hopefully you are getting some much needed down time from work and other earthly burdens get well soon.

By the way where is Shankar Sir??? I do not see his posts for a long long time.

busy with his manufacturing unit (which supplies parts for certain ISRO launchers)

Get well soon Vivek!!!

Will call u up for ICE BUCKET CHALLENGE!!!

* Gentle Poke*

As has been reported, I had taken the proverbial "arrow-to-the-knee" with a broken shoulder. Perhaps a sign that I need to be more careful with age? Sigh.

But after the requisite amount of doctor-ordered R&R, I am back in action (now that I can type continuously again without tears coming out in pain! ).

Pliss to read some past posts to provide fluidity to the following posts onlee.

WEST OF THE ISLAMGARH ROAD BREACH
FIVE KILOMETERS INSIDE PAKISTAN
DAY 1 + 0835 HRS

The hydraulic armed swung into action with a slight swish and pushed the square paneled radar off the roof of the truck and tilted it to nearly sixty degrees off the base. Then the motors mounted on the truck rotated the radar unit by thirty degrees in the azimuth plane with a slight hymn noise and then stopped with a jerk.

That was the cue.

“Okay, let’s go.” Major Subramanian said as he uncrossed his arms and waved the soldiers standing nearby with the desert camouflage netting. The latter consisted of sand colored webbing laced with shrubs uprooted from locations near the battery’s perimeter. The soldiers were already clambering on to the trucks and spreading the netting all over the vehicles. The latter were already painted sand-brown before the current operations had started. They would be damn-near impossible to spot visually from the air or the ground once Subramanian’s men were done with them.

Subramanian watched and then blinked his eyes as the sweat rolled into them from his forehead. His hands instinctively reached his eyes to rub them clear.
Damn heat!

He glanced at the blazing sun to the east. It wasn’t even mid-morning and the desert was already turning into a furnace. Well, that was life. He sighed and walked back towards the battery command tent about one hundred meters away in its own camouflage netting. He noticed the buried cables crisscrossing between the different vehicles.

The cables connected the essentials between the different vehicles. Each WLR truck consisted of its own self-contained crew, but drew its power from a different vehicle, similarly camouflaged some distance away. Three such pairs of radar and power vehicles were deployed in an arc spreading over a kilometer between its two widest points. The idea was to provide high resolution data on inbound projectiles. All of these connected to the tent that Subramanian was walking to. That tent was where the remote display monitors were hooked up and where he would coordinate the operations of the individual crews below him in the chain of command and Steel-Central above him. The latter would then connect him to any and all counter-battery offensive systems in the area of operations.
Thus constituted the “Ferrite” battery that was designed to cover both the breach point near the Islamgarh road as well as the advancing columns of Rhino forces. Once the latter moved further west, vehicle pairs from Ferrite would leap-frog over along with the Trishul combat-engineering units to extend the bubble of detection against enemy artillery systems.

All in theory, of course.

Subramanian trudged through the soft, hot sand on the way to his command tent. He had reflected on the battle plan for his battery long enough…and had convinced himself that it sounded good in theory. In practice, a thousand details could go wrong. A simplest act of communications breakdown between units in this delicate makeup of forces would render the whole plan ineffective. And all of the Indian soldiers currently inside Pakistan would pay the price…

He pushed aside the flaps of the tent and noticed before entering that other soldiers were busy digging air-raid trenches nearby. He frowned at what that represented. The one thing that bothered him most was the air-defense coverage of his units inside Pakistan. If –when– the Pakistani commanders realized the severity of the situation here, the Islamgarh breach point would become their focal point for air and missile attacks. And if friendly air cover was not sufficient, it would come down to the army forward air defenses to hold back the strikes. Subramanian was under no illusions as to where his own unit ranked within the enemy’s priority lists.

He sighed and walked into the tent, lowering the flap behind him. The inside was a cacophony of voices as his men got into the process of bringing Ferrite online. The tables in here were lined with the kind of displays and radio packs that were needed for complete remote operations of the radar units. All of this was standard, of course. The men here had already hooked up the generators outside and Subramanian noted the cables laid out all over the place connecting the comms, power and displays into a cohesive set.

So far so good.

He appreciated the shade inside the tent and removed his sunglasses before turning to his comms officer: “Get Steel-Central on the comms. Advise them that Ferrite is booting up and that we need a status from Bushfire-actual.”

“Yes sir.” The Lieutenant turned and got to work with the radios.
“Now,” Subramanian said as he walked up behind his second-in-command sitting on a chair behind the remote display monitor, “let’s see what the electronic battle-space is looking like.”
“Light it up?”
“Light it up.”

The captain brought up the phone-like comms speaker connecting his vehicles: “Ferrite-C-two to Ferrite-Romeos. Send traffic, over.”

The screen in front of the two officers lit up with incoming feed from all three Ferrite deployments to the north and south. The captain switched on the terrain and map overlay with two buttons and it showed them the circular instrumented and priority coverage zones in white and red colors. The positions of the Ferrite vehicles were shown as were the ABAMS tracker feed showing the Rhino forces west and north of them, deep inside Pakistani territory. Also lighting up were the inbound threat plots of artillery fire that was rocking the Rhino lines…

“Sir, I have Bushfire-actual on the comms.”
Subramanian turned to face his comms officer and then walked over, taking the speaker from the young man.
“Ferrite-actual here, Bushfire-actual. We are op-con ready. What’s your status, over?” The voice back was gruff but familiar…and oddly comforting to Subramanian:

“Bushfire has been op-con fu@king ready for two hours, Ferrite! Steel-rain advises me that we are now passed to Ferrite. Call the shots, son. Over.”
“Roger, Bushfire.-actual. Stand by for targets. Out.” Subramanian handed the speaker back to the lieutenant and then turned to his second-in-command: “Okay, tell me you have some juicy targets!”

The captain nodded: “I have targets. Enemy one-fifty-five millimeter battery, roughly twenty-five kilometers northwest of us. We are resolving now but these are the guys that have been buzzing the Rhino force from the moment they stepped on to Paki soil. My bet is a battery of M-one-zero-nines. Any possibility to confirm?”

“Visually?” Subramanian asked rhetorically. “Not a chance. Not right now, anyway. Steel-central has other targets to keep an eye on with their RPVs. We will prosecute this one electronically only. Let’s not let the enemy know that we are tracking their every shell from inside their own goddamn territory!” Subramanian smiled faintly at that. “Pass what you have to Bushfire immediately. High priority target. Prosecute and destroy!”

TWENTY-FIVE KILOMETERS EAST OF THE ISLAMGARH BREACH POINT
RAJASTHAN, INDIA
DAY 1 + 0902 HRS

The boxy shaped launcher on the back of the Tatra heavy-duty truck lifted off its bed and rotated up on the force of its hydraulic arms. The six square shaped doors on the front and back of the launcher remained closed to prevent sand and dust from entering the launch tubes. Four of these vehicles were deployed in a cusp-shaped section around the breach point being exploited for entry into Pakistan. However, given the range of the missiles carried within these launchers, as well as the value of these systems, meant that they would not be following the leading Indian forces into Pakistani soil. For now, at any rate.

This Prahaar ballistic-missile battery was part of the overall counter-artillery forces under the Bushfire codename. Specifically, this was Bushfire-three. Bushfire-one and –two were two Pinaka MLRS batteries that would be moving closer behind the advancing forces given their relatively smaller range. Whatever was outside of the range of Bushfire-one and –two fell into the range and jurisdiction of Bushfire-three. Anything that Bushfire-three couldn’t handle, would fall to Bushfire-zulu, which was a coded tag for the Corps level Brahmos cruise missile unit. Bushfire-zulu was not under the control of Brigadier Sudarshan at Steel-central and reported directly to the Corps commander, even though it shared a Bushfire code tag with the other long-range arty units.

As things stood, the two Pinaka batteries were in transit mode through the breach point into Pakistan and were not available to deploy. That put Bushfire-three forces on call to take out the enemy tube-artillery batteries…

The top-right launch tube doors opened on the front and back of the launcher with snaps. Thirty seconds later the first Prahaar missile thundered from within the launcher, engulfing the launch vehicle in an expanding cloud of brown dust and sand before streaking vertically into the blue skies above. The second launch tube opened with a snap and the next missile followed close behind. Two other launch vehicles to the north, joined the fray with an additional missile each.

As the missiles made their way up into the sky and turned west, the launch vehicles remained covered in dust for a minute. Then the empty tube doors closed and the launcher box was lowered back on to the vehicle. Ninety seconds later the vehicles were rolling off their parked positions and headed away to the next launch sites to prevent the Pakistanis from doing exactly what they had just done…

EAST OF RAHIM-YAR-KHAN
PAKISTAN
DAY 1 + 0910 HRS

As the constant rumble of jet engine noise in the skies above continued, the crews of the twelve M109 self-propelled artillery vehicles were busy mobilizing to move to the next leg of their constant shoot-and-scoot fire campaign that had started in earnest this fateful morning. As the villagers in the nearby fields and curious civilians on the rooftops watched eagerly from the distance, the barrels of the howitzers were lowered and locked into place by crewmen while others ran about gathering up anything that was left. The diesel engines rumbled as anxious drivers waited impatiently. The smoke and dirt from the last set of artillery shots fired had still not drifted away. Nor had the cheers of the nearby civilian mobs who had come to see their armed forced in action. Under other circumstances the battery commander and the military police would have kept the civilians at bay, but not today. There was no time.

Within seconds the lead M109 had rumbled over its muddy defilade and rolled over to the dilapidated tar road that ran east to the border. As it lined up behind the convoy of resupply trucks already moving north, the other vehicles were moving into positions on the road as well. Within two minutes this location would be nothing but a chewed up farmland area covered with dirt tracks and expended artillery shells. The news crews from one of the local Pakistani media were here as well. But they were parked much further away for safety reasons. They knew more than to join the mob of crazed youngsters shouting Islamic jihad alongside an army fighting a massive invading force.

Two minutes is what they had needed.
Two minutes is what they did not have.

The first Prahaar missile streaked in and detonated above the farmland and the roads, exploding in a whitish fireball that darkened the blazing desert sun for an instant before being engulfed into a mushroom cloud of dust rising into the blue skies above. The other missiles slapped into the area in quick successions of thunderclaps. The instantly thrown up dust blotted out the sun and a the skies looked like they were on fire in a searing red-haze.

The strike had destroyed the farms and what had been the tar road and replaced it with a massive shallow crater of sand and blackened and blazing hulls of Pakistani M109s. The lighter trucks had been smashed to smithereens and dispersed into the dust that was now falling hundreds of meters away.

When the thunder died, there was nothing but an eerie silence except for the searing desert-like winds, blowing the dust into the stem of the dissipating mushroom cloud. The mud and cement houses nearby had been obliterated. And so had the crowds of young men chanting jihad. There were no bodies to be seen. At least not yet…

The Pakistani cameraman got up from the ground and saw blood coming from his nose and ears. He could not hear anything. His equipment was smashed and their vehicle was lying to its side on the road. As his hearing recovered, he heard the first screams of men and women as they ran to where the demolished houses had been. All there was to see now was this lightish-brown dust cloud quietly dissipating away for hundreds of feet into the skies above.

It was not a nuclear blast, but it certainly looked like one to the uninitiated. And he fell into the latter category. He got up on his feet in panic and ran away from his car, stumbling past the crowd of people also running away. He had to get to a phone, he reasoned. He had to report the indiscriminate use of nuclear weapons now being employed by the Hindu infidels…

THIRTY KILOMETERS EAST OF RAHIM-YAR-KHAN
PAKISTAN
DAY 1 + 0920 HRS

The relief could not have come at a better time for Kulkarni and the Rhino armor force.

“Rhino-actual to all Rhino elements,” Kulkarni spoke into his speaker as he swiveled the ABAMS screen in front, “looks like our arty friends have just joined the war! Steel-Central tells me that the disruption in enemy indirect fire is not temporary! Best damn news I have heard this morning! Rhino will continue the charge-to-contact. Update estimate contact to five minutes. Rhino-actual, out.”