These J-11s, although too far north to join the immediate fight, would move south and bring the retreating AWACS bird under their protection and escort it back to the landing pattern at Korla. He also ordered the ingress of more H-6 tankers from Wulumuqi airbase north of Urumqi to refuel the inevitable fuel-hungry fighters over the Taklimakan desert…
Klaxons sounded off at all concerned Chinese airbases.
The first to respond was the 17TH Air Regiment pilots already in the cockpits of their J-7s on the tarmac at Kashgar. They were airborne in under a minute as the rest of the Regiment pilots and ground-crews ran in all directions to get the rest of the aircraft in the air…
Back in the skies above Hotien, the commander for the No. 220 Squadron ordered his two groups to spread out east and west of the incoming J-11s. He had every intention of forcing the Chinese flight-leader to either engage one of the two sweeping groups of Indian Su-30s or engage both after splitting his already outnumbered force even more.
Either way, six Su-27 knockoffs against sixteen Indian Su-30MKIs was by no means a fair fight. And the Indian commander didn’t really have to try any fancy tactics. But he knew that every PLAAF airbase in western China would be scrambling every single fighter they had to prevent the Indians from taking down their AWACS. And so he had to deal with his primary objectives quickly…
After a tense few moments the response from the J-11 pilots became visible and the six J-11s split into two groups of three and engaged.
A few seconds later the RWRs on both sides screeched to indicate the release of air-to-air weapons. The J-11s were launching PJ-12 missiles and the Indians had let loose a barrage of R-77s, two per aircraft.
There was no hope for the six Chinese pilots faced with thirty-two missiles headed towards them from sixteen launch platforms.
There was no place to run and nothing to hide behind over the flat desert below.
All six J-11 pilots flipped their Flankers to the side and punched out load after load of chaff and even flares in desperation. Their low-light optics spotted smoke trails from the barrage of R-77s crisscrossing the horizon in front of them like a spider web…
All six J-11s were blotted out in loud whumps as salvo after salvo of R-77 continued to slam into the disintegrating airframes. At least a dozen missiles veered off course into the night sky, chasing imaginary chaff targets once the aircraft had disintegrated into shards of metal.
On the Indian side the pilots were very clearly briefed about this. All fighters that were seeing the incoming Chinese missiles heading for them on their radars were authorized to break formation and evade.
Others were to punch afterburners and accelerate beyond this battlefield in order to chase down their primary target.
As far as the inbound missiles were concerned, there were a lot of them. The Chinese pilots had fired multiple salvos from each aircraft in their hopes of taking down at least a few, if not more of the enemy. Of the sixteen Indian Sukhois, eleven broke formation and dived for the ground, releasing chaff and activating onboard ECMs as they headed for the desert floor below on full afterburner.
The remaining five Su-30s punched afterburners and went supersonic as they spotted the receding signature of the Chinese KJ-2000 on the edge of their radar coverage…
On board the Chinese aircraft, the Lieutenant-Colonel piloting the aircraft was now lowering his altitude as much as he dared. His hands had become sweaty under the gloves.
His co-pilot, another Lieutenant-Colonel, was pressing his radio headset speaker closer to his mouth with his left hand while pushing himself to look around the sides of the cockpit glass. He was in direct contact with the flight-leader of the nine J-11s from the 19TH Fighter Division that were now converging on their position.
The incoming fighters were variously armed, as they had just arrived in theater and had not even been properly briefed about combat operations in the AO. But now they were getting a firsthand look at the desperate situation of the air-war over Tibet…
On the ground at Korla, the commander of the 26TH Air Division was ordered by Chen to launch the sole KJ-200 turboprop AEW aircraft from Korla so that the incoming eleven J-11s from Urumqi were not flying blind into a deadly combat zone.
A few minutes later the radar operations crew of this aircraft were scrambling towards their parked aircraft while the pilots initiated emergency engine startup. The crews were tired after having just returned from rotation and had not been expecting to be in the air until the KJ-2000 crew had returned after a few hours, with whom they were on twelve-hour patrol rotations.
As the first propeller started spinning on the ground and the pilots began switching on their helmet-mounted low-light goggles, five J-7s from Korla were also rolling out one behind the other towards the runway. The airbase was now declared under threat. And the base personnel were hardly prepared for it.
Very deep inside China, Korla was not expected to ever have to face such a threat. And so there was confusion on the ground as officers and men of the 26TH Air Division attempted to figure out what to do about their precious equipment and aircraft strewn about on an open tarmac…
Back over the skies above the desert, the five supersonic Indian Su-30s had closed enough with the lumbering KJ-2000 aircraft that they now fired off one R-77 per aircraft.
The RWR on board the Chinese aircraft lit up immediately and the Lieutenant-Colonel banked the aircraft to the side and attempted to dive; not easy for an aircraft the size of the Il-76. Unlike the Phalcon and its uprated engines, the Chinese Il-76 based AWACS was underpowered. And so there was little power to spare for these desperate maneuvers.
The Lieutenant-Colonel ordered his co-pilot to release all chaff and flare stores on board and went live over the radio shouting that his aircraft had been engaged by enemy fighters.
But his time had run out.
The first R-77 slammed into the port wing just between the two engines and the jarring explosion ripped through the wing, shredding the fuselage below. The Lieutenant-Colonel and his flight crew were thrown forward in their seats as the explosion whipped the massive aircraft across the sky. By the time he came through a second later, all warning lights and alarms were screeching inside the cockpit as his co-pilot attempted to pull the aircraft from its shallow dive.
He looked back and saw the flight engineer on the flight deck in a pool of blood from some shrapnel round. The fuselage had decompressed in the explosion. The aircraft shuddered again, this time the second R-77 had hit the aft side of the T-shaped horizontal stabilizer and the top section of that now fell away from the aircraft. He turned forward as his co-pilot screamed in horror. He had enough time only to see the rapidly approaching ground before it ripped through the cockpit…
As their prey disappeared from the radar view, the five Indian Su-30 pilots instantly banked in five different directions, dropped chaff all over the skies and streaked south. One-hundred-fifty kilometers behind them, the nine J-11s from Urumqi and the five J-7s from Korla were closing fast.
But there was no time to stay around and engage the Chinese fighters. All Indian Su-30s over the Taklimakan desert would soon be running low on fuel and weapons and the skies around them were literally filling up with PLAAF fighters. Sixteen J-7s were now airborne from Kashgar from the 17TH Air Regiment there. Enemy fighters were closing in from all directions on the compass around the Indian intruders…