Chen had ordered the relaxations on normal protocol, much to the chagrin of the senior political officer at the base. The latter had objected to Chen on the grounds that such lax behavior acted as catalyst for the dilution of morale. Chen had dismissed the concern offhandedly. He trusted his pilots and knew that they would appreciate the flexibility given to them by their commander. It also enhanced effectiveness and efficiency. But such dismissal of the political officers was not something that officers junior to Chen could even think of.
Privileges of seniority… Feng mused as a waiter leaned over to ask him if he needed anything. Feng dismissed him with a wave and returned to staring at his meal in silence.
They were running out of time. Chen had made that very clear in his last meeting with him.
He looked at his wristwatch and realized that the 19TH Fighter Division would have begun deploying to three key airbases north of Tibet by now. The 55TH Fighter Regiment, part of the 19TH Division, would be deploying detachments of its three fresh J-11 squadrons between Golmud, Urumqi and Wulumuqi airbases.
The problem for Feng was that he was running out of airbases. That might seem surprising until one considered that the Tibetan plateau, because of its very high altitude, is not conducive for fighter operations as sea-level airbases are. This has to do with the thinner density air at these airbases that forces fighters to use ultra-long take-off lengths to allow operations or much reduced payloads over shorter lengths. Chinese sea-level airbases were simply too far out from the battlefields.
This reduced the net effect of the numerical superiority enjoyed by the PLAAF against the IAF. The latter was effectively using its plethora of sea-level airbases on the southern side of the Himalayas to beat the low density Chinese fighter forces over Tibet into submission.
The airborne tanker force was the only support option in such cases. And while the Indians were easily doubling the endurances for their fighter patrols because of the close proximity between the airbases and the AO, it was taking a flight of J-11s three tanker refueling operations simply to bring the aircraft to the AO and allow it to maintain a decent length patrol. So how do you concentrate forces between such widely displaced airbases and light tanker forces?
You don’t… Feng told his inner voice as he picked at the chicken on his plate with his fork.
And cruise-missiles were not the answer. Not the permanent answer, at any rate. They had to be launched by standoff aircraft and now that the Indians had gained dominance over the skies of southern Tibet, they were thinning out the slow moving cruise-missile barrages with air-to-air missiles before the former could reach their targets. So while some missiles from each barrage were getting through, it was creating an attrition rate far lower than anticipated by Feng and his staff in all pre-war simulations.
And what about the Indians? What would be their response?
Predicting that is the key for us, isn’t it?
Feng put down the fork for the final time and looked out the large glass walls of the dining hall where he could see the last vestiges of orange-pink skies as the sun went below the horizon.
He wiped his hands and got up from the table, invoking looks from several officers eating their food. Feng was lost in his own thoughts. As he walked over to glass walls and stared up, he could see the darkening skies above and the reflection of the dining room behind him in the glass of the windows. He touched the windows and felt the cold outside as the first snowfall of the night was beginning.
He smiled and brought his hands behind his back in the formal stance but continued to stare out. He saw two J-7s lighting up their afterburners as they took to the skies in a paired formation. The fighters quickly switched off the afterburners and disappeared into the starry night sky…
The Indians were not big on the use of cruise-missiles the way his own side was, Feng thought again.
No. That was not right. It’s not their willingness to use cruise-missiles but rather their lack of ability to do so. They had no carrier aircraft other than their newly modified Sukhois to hoist the only credible air-launched cruise-missile they had: the Brahmos ALCM.
The problem with this configuration was that each fighter could only carry one of the supersonic missiles during a single sortie. So that meant a flight of several Su-30s configured for the launch role could launch at best perhaps a half-dozen missiles at a time. Better still, doing so required them to move precious heavy fighters away from the air-dominance role and into the strike fighter role at a time when they could least afford it.
By comparison, Feng could deploy six cruise-missiles from a single H-6 and not have to divert his J-11 force into the task. The Brahmos ALCM was a very high-speed missile but with low range and endurance compared with true long-range cruise-missiles. Their subsonic Nirbhay missile was intended to fill this role but had not entered service yet, which was fortunate for Feng and the other PLAAF planners. The Nirbhay, when matured, would become the equivalent of the Chinese CJ-10 Long-Sword GLCMs. The Brahmos ALCM on the other hand was a purely tactical SEAD-specific missile and had been used as such by the Indians.
Then there was the availability of the missiles. The Brahmos ALCM was new to the Indian inventory and had been acquired only a year ago. Production rates in India did not compare well with China and so they had only a few missiles on hand when this war had started.
And for all that they had used this small force of missiles effectively, Feng admitted in a moment of candor. The only reason he was where he was now with this air war was because of the effective use of that small arsenal of missiles against his air-defenses. Once those air-defenses had gone down, the same Indian launch aircraft had returned back to their fighter roles. But the important fact was that the Indians were now mostly out of their small ALCM inventory.
Probably… Feng thought.
He really didn’t know for sure whether the Indian inventory had been exhausted or not. But the intelligence estimates seemed to suggest it.
So that meant that the Indians would now be forced to depend on their remaining force on multi-role fighters for strike missions against PLAAF airbases and other infrastructure as well as PLA logistics.
Thanks to the massive offensives undertaken by the PLA along the Indian border, the Indians had been forced to allocate their small force of aircraft for the close-air-support role on the frontlines and for hitting PLA targets inside Tibet.
And in doing so they had encountered losses. Not enough to shut them down, but enough so that Feng could breathe easy and instead concentrate on countering Indian fighters.
But that no longer applied now that the ground offensives had lost momentum on both sides.
The Ladakh battlefields were a junkyard of prized weaponry from both sides for net zero gains. Both sides had exhausted their armies in Ladakh. To the east the offensive into Bhutan had made spectacular gains initially but was now bogged down in the mountains and had failed to capture the Bhutanese capital. And the Indians were counter-attacking to take back control. Frankly, the PLA Highland Division that had entered Bhutan from Tibet had failed in its major objectives but had succeeded in one very major objective. It had bogged the Indian forces in the east in a third country and had reduced their strengths in the Chumbi valley where they could otherwise have been used against PLA defenses.