The high frequency rumbling noise of the Heron’s twin propellers was drowned by the howling winds as the large unmanned aircraft flew past the snowcapped Chomo-Yummo peak and entered the Tibetan plateau, twenty-thousand feet below. The sunlight glistened off the dull-gray paint as it flew above the intermittent cloud cover below, deep inside Chinese controlled Tibet…
The Israeli made Heron is designed for very high-altitude and long-endurance missions. But it is not a combat aircraft. It has no weapons of its own. It does have powerful eyes and the patience to stay above, quietly, for long periods of time.
For the past eleven days, IAF Herons were being used for reconnaissance patrols above the battlefields in Ladakh, Chumbi-valley and Arunachal-Pradesh. But in all these cases they had flown over Indian airspace. But now that the PLAAF fighter and airborne radar threat as well as the S-300 based air-defenses in the Shigatse-Lhasa region had been terminated, the conditions had changed. The PLAAF would continue to challenge the skies over central and southern Tibet, but they would now not have the assets needed to find and eliminate the lone Herons flying over remote sectors and at high-altitudes. And that was good enough for the Heron operators within the IAF.
These birds were being moved north into Tibet now in support of SFC. Their job was to keep an eye on the short-range DF-11 and DF-15 launchers being moved into northern Tibet. This was by no means an easy tasking, given the heavy PLA air-defenses being allocated to these missile units of the 2ND Artillery Corps. And while the S-300 area-defense weapons in Tibet were no more, the Chinese still had a very respectable number of surface-to-air systems and associated ground radars deployed around these missile forces.
As a result, the Heron crews were flying their birds at the edge of their service-ceiling at thirty-five thousand feet and doing their darned best to remain invisible. From now on the IAF Herons would fly over Tibet until the Chinese missile threat was downgraded by the SFC.
The leading Brahmos missile shattered into a thousand pieces of burning steel as an HQ-9 air-defense missile slammed into it meters above the sea. The burning debris splashed into the waters at supersonic speeds, causing a massive transient concave shaped cavity on the surface. It expanded for several dozen meters before the water poured back in and rose up into the air like a volcano.
But as the waters frothed below, two more Brahmos missiles streaked by, oblivious to what had just happened. The other two HQ-9 missiles fell behind and dived into the surface of the ocean.
More HQ-9 missiles were in the air now, but they weren’t diving down into the incoming Indian anti-ship missiles. They were arcing high into the bright sunny skies above as they went after the three escaping Indian Su-30s far to the northeast. These three aircraft were now diving on full afterburners behind clouds of chaff. They would soon be out of the range of the intercepting Chinese missiles.
But the ship that had launched those missiles, the Chinese PLAN 052C class air-defense Destroyer Lanzhou and the other ships in the fleet had more pressing concerns at the moment…
The Sovremenny class Destroyer Fuzhou, listed and splashed through the surface, conducting evasive maneuvers. It turned to port while the Lanzhou moved across its starboard, exposing its broadside to the two incoming Indian missiles, effectively covering the Fuzhou. It also allowed the Lanzhou to bring all of its close-in weapons to bear on the inbound threat.
A kilometer south, the other 052C air-defense ship with the Chinese fleet, the Haikou, was already in position and its weapons opened up before the Lanzhou. The starboard side of the ship was covered with light smoke as the anti-air guns filled the air nearby with a wall of expended ammunition and lines of yellow tracers flying towards the two supersonic inbound specks on the horizon.
The first Brahmos missile streaked straight by the gunfire intended for it, conducting an elaborate ‘S’ maneuver. The Lanzhou had a good intercept angle on the second missile and it shattered under the anti-air fire. But the first missile passed by the bow and slammed through the stern of the Fuzhou as it completed its evasive turn. The massive fireball shredded the aft of the ship just as the ship’s propellers detached from its driving shafts and flew over the Lanzhou and its stunned bridge crew before splashing into the waters on the other side…
The Fuzhou instantly started taking on seawater as its forward momentum died away. The thick black column of smoke rising from the aft of the ship and the licks of flame rising into the air left no doubt about its fate. Those lucky sailors on the front of the ship who survived the impact began jumping into the ocean while other ships launched helicopters for rescue operations.
But while the Fuzhou lay gutted, the Haikou and the Lanzhou had even more threats pop up from the northwest as a swarm of subsonic Klub anti-ship missiles began heading in. These had been launched from Admiral Surakshan’s surface-action-group destroyers in coordination with the Su-30s from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The Klubs were high subsonic speed missiles and much slower than the Brahmos, but if allowed to go unchecked, they could ravage the Chinese ships.
The Lanzhou also detected the radar emissions from the Ka-31 AEW helicopters of the Indian Navy, and that revealed to them the general location of the Indian ships over the horizon.
The other two Sovremenny class ships immediately went into action against this threat. Both the Hangzhu and the Ningbo headed straight towards the northwest. The Haikou went into action as well as it steamed at full speed to take position alongside the two Sovremenny ships as the twenty-eight Klub missiles bored in.
The Haikou fired a salvo of HQ-9 missiles as fast as they could be cycled through the onboard CIC computers. In all, seventeen Klub missiles were shredded from the skies before the Lanzhou caught up as well and took down all of the remainder except for two which were accounted for by the close-in guns. In doing so, they had cycled all of their onboard supply of HQ-9s.
Exactly as they had been expected to by Admiral Surakshan.
Now the Indian ships began launching their onboard anti-ship variants of the Brahmos missiles using the cueing information from the long-range P-8Is far to the south, keeping the Chinese fleet under long-range observation. Within seconds, eleven Brahmos missiles had been launched from seven major Indian surface warships. The longer ranged Brahmos allowed them to stay out of range of the Moskits on board the Chinese Sovremenny ships, which could be as deadly as the Brahmos.
But the Indians weren’t the only ones using Ka-31 helicopters today. The Hangzhu had launched its own Ka-31 AEWs minutes before while the Klubs had bored in. These helicopters quickly spotted the stealth ship INS Satpura over the horizon as it screened ahead of the surface ships using its AEW helicopters. Both the Hangzhu and Ningbo fired their supersonic Moskits at the Indian ship just as the Brahmos missiles appeared over the horizon.
But now the 052C air-defense ships were out of HQ-9s to intercept these deadly threats, and all ships launched their far less effective shorter-range anti-air missiles into the sky.