“Hard to be sure which ones are and which ones are not when you consider that all we have is overhead satellite intel,” the Brigadier said and walked over to the wall map. He pressed some buttons and pulled up the imagery over one of the DF-21 batteries and another of the DF-11 and put them side by side. The images were in gray-coloration and showed a good resolution of the launchers and the security around the battery vehicles by PLA infantry and light-armor units. “But you can make out from the level of forces guarding a given battery here whether its nuclear tipped or not. Those that are very heavily guarded are likely nuclear-tipped. Others are conventional.”
“That’s one hell of an assumption there,” Iyer noted as he faced the map from where he stood. “Have you considered that they might try to fool us on exactly that issue by either giving all of their launchers the same security or messing with our heads by giving higher security to conventional launchers as well?”
“Yes it is an assumption and potentially a deadly one,” Valhotra agreed and looked back Iyer: “But not much we can do outside of that. Besides, if Beijing wants to use conventional ballistic-missiles in the war, they will want to ensure that there is no confusion on our side on the escalation.”
“You assume that they don’t want nuclear war with us,” Iyer cautioned his colleague and continued: “I cannot make that assumption. We need better intel and a clearer analysis on their motives and unit deployments. Such a simplistic argument cannot hold water in this room. I know that we have been doing this for quite some time even before the war started. But now that the war is on, peacetime computations cannot be applied. We have to be more careful and must take into consideration outside factors such as the state of the war and its effect on the enemy deployments. Understood?”
Iyer looked around to see everybody nodding. He turned back to the Brigadier: “So what’s the count based on the current estimates?”
“About seventy-five nuclear-tipped launchers in northern Tibet as of right now.”
“God! Seventy-Five?” Valhotra blurted out.
“Yes sir,” the Brigadier added. “Mostly deployed on DF-21s. That’s almost their entire DF-21 force and also a good chunk of their overall nuclear warheads.”
“Think they are sending us a message?” Iyer asked Valhotra.
“If they are, they sure as hell not pussyfooting it,” Valhotra responded.
“I agree,” Iyer noted as he crossed his arms. “From where they are deployed, the DF-21s will cover most of northern India and all of the battlefields. We will have more warning with the DF-11s and the DF-15s because they will have to be moved south and on roads that we currently dominate. That makes the shorter range missiles iffy to use and very risky from their operational standpoint. So my gut feeling is that they will stick with the DF-21s as their preferred choice for the nuclear delivery role. They might even use the DF-31s to knock out our cities in central and southern India in conjunction with the DF-21s if the shit hits the fan.”
Iyer took a deep breath as he considered his words. It was not the first time he found it hard to remain objective at his job.
“Looks like it,” Valhotra added. “I expect their shorter range missiles to be used first in the conventional role. Perhaps against Arunachal Pradesh or some such target. They will attempt to force the outcome of this war using those first.”
“Yup. That’s true,” Iyer agreed. “The problem is, if we mistake a nuclear-tipped missile as a conventional type, it will be disaster for us. We need to be damned sure whether these DF-11s and DF-15s are nuclear-tipped or not.”
“Of course,” Valhotra said and then walked over to the table to pick up the latest information on the 2ND Artillery Corps ORBAT.
“But look at the numbers,” he continued. “They only have about two hundred-fifty warheads to begin with. They need a certain portion of that in reserve and another portion armed for threatening the US and Japan. Once you remove these from their total inventory, these numbers in Tibet start making sense. Also the DF-11s and the DF-15s really don’t give them the bang for the buck in terms of range and options. I think they have concentrated their nuclear-tipped missiles amidst the DF-21s for a reason: they want us to know which is which!”
“But those missiles are still in northern Tibet,” Iyer said. “As I said before, they will need to be moved south first and we can take them out in transit since we control the skies over southern Tibet now. We will know when Beijing is thinking dirty because they will have to move these missiles on the roads to the south. We will have a large warning window!”
The soldiers wearing the shaded-brown digital camouflage uniforms squinted under the bright morning sun low on the horizon to the east, silhouetting the three Il-76 transports on the tarmac.
As they watched, the vehicles in spotless new green-brown paint rolled off the cargo cabin on the aircraft via the lowered ramps on to the concrete tarmac. As they rolled out of the shadows of the aircraft that had delivered them here, the three vehicle drivers now stepped on the accelerators and sped off towards their marshaling point at the western edge of the airbase. The soldiers waiting for their precious cargo hopped on to the empty chassis of the vehicle behind the driver’s cabin while their officers got into their multi-terrain vehicles, knock-offs of the US HMMWV vehicle, and left the parked Il-76s behind to join their unit.
Further down the tarmac, two Y-8 turboprop transports were offloading the ready-to-use CJ-10 GLCMs for the three launch vehicles delivered by the Il-76s. This unit had relocated within a day to northern Tibet under orders from Colonel-General Liu at the 2ND Artillery Corps headquarters north of Beijing.
Liu had been convinced by Wencang, the acting commander of the PLAAF, to release three launchers from the reserve force of the 821ST Brigade at Guangxi in south-eastern China to the PLAAF. Chen had arranged for the strategic transports to fly the small detachment to Golmud.
The 821ST Brigade had detachments already in northern Tibet and had in fact taken part in the initial cruise-missile strikes at the start of the war ten days ago. But those launchers were now back into the fold of the 2ND Artillery Corps and part of their strategic deterrent force. The 821ST Brigade did have a small force in south-eastern China for use against the Taiwanese and this force had now been withdrawn to the Tibet Theater for use by the PLAAF.
The CJ-10 Long-Sword GLCMs had very long-range and could, in theory, be launched directly from the 821ST Brigade holding areas in Guangxi against Indian targets. But that entailed flying over Myanmar airspace. Further, the missile range of nine-hundred nautical miles at subsonic speeds meant that if launched from Guangxi, they could only reach perhaps as far as Chabua in India. Not particularly useful, from Wencang and Chen’s point of view.
But from Golmud, a lot more juicy Indian targets were reachable.
The detachment that had landed at Golmud was under the operational control of Feng at the Junwei-Kongjun.
Golmud airbase was not deserted, however. Aircraft from the 26TH Air Division continued to operate from there along with a detachment of J-11 air-superiority fighters on airbase defense duty. Golmud now represented one of the last untouched PLAAF airbases in Tibet on account of its long distance away from the Indian border. No other airbase south of Golmud was now accessible to the Chinese. Lhasa and Shigatse were included in the no-go list as an indicator of how desperate the situation was for the PLAAF over Tibet.