Two vehicles with three missiles each meant a total of six deadly warheads. A cruise speed three times the speed of sound and a travel distance of three hundred kilometers to target allowed for a roughly five minute flight. Such a short launch to impact time could surprise anybody, anytime and anywhere.
The issue however, was terrain.
The current launch point was at six-thousand feet above sea-level. Se-La peaks to the northwest were at fourteen to fifteen thousand feet above sea-level. The Great Himalayas peaks went as high as sixteen thousand feet, and then the Tibetan plateau remained at roughly the same altitude from there to Lhasa. High supersonic velocities like those of the Brahmos missiles do not allow low-level terrain-contour-matching or TERCOM flights through the valleys without drastic reduction in range, if at all. So the missile had to climb above these peaks rather than fly between them and in doing so make themselves visible to Chinese air defenses. But that could hardly be avoided at the moment.
The Major in charge of the two launchers walked around the back of one of the vehicles after having done his visual checks. He walked past the driver’s cabin on the front and slapped the door twice, letting the personnel inside know he was done with his checks. On their end they had already gone through their pre-launch process. Once the Major gave them the go ahead, the two TELs came to life with the hydraulic pumps pushing the canister tubes from horizontal position to vertical.
Inside the launch control cabin, several officers were busy loading target information into the missile fire-control system. The Major in command of the detachment was monitoring the activities over the shoulder of the men sitting on the consoles. By this time small orange warning lights were flashing near the vehicles for everybody to clear the area. The Lieutenant sitting at the fire-control console announced a “Ready” to all in mobile command trailer. The Major verified the numbers and turned to the Lieutenant:
“Fire!”
The Lieutenant flipped open the cover over the lit button labeled “LAUNCH” and then depressed the button.
A second later the ground vibrated as the first Brahmos Block-II cruise-missile streaked out of the canister on the first vehicle under the force of its solid-rocket-booster and raced vertically for the cloudy sky above. Several seconds later the booster exhausted itself and was ejected from the missile. Then the ramjet engine blasted into operation and propelled the missile even higher. With the booster ejection the missile lost all visible smoke trails just as the missile disappeared through the low gray cloud cover. But all of the Indian soldiers nearby heard a thunderclap announcing that the Indian missiles had gone supersonic…
Unlike Dirang, the skies were clear blue over southern Tibet. Over Lhasa, there were no clouds but the bright blue background was littered with pairs of thin white contrails forming large circles from the large number of Chinese military aircraft. The clarity of the cold mountain air showed new pairs of contrails approaching from the northeast…
The airspace over Lhasa was busy this afternoon. There were twelve J-11 fighters flying overhead on patrols while another six J-8IIs from the 33RD Fighter Division were on the ground being refueled. These were providing security to the small groups of Il-76 heavy transport aircraft that had been plying back and forth between Lhasa and other airbases to the northeast. On the ground, there were two Il-76s being hurriedly unloaded while another was approaching from Lanzhou. These aircraft were bringing in supplies and reinforcement troops for the PLA 13TH Group Army who’s Divisions were now in contact with the Indian IV Corps in Arunachal Pradesh.
There was no warning.
The six Brahmos missiles streaking across the cold morning skies over southern Tibet were detected by Chinese radar stations south of Lhasa just as they crossed the McMahon line. But with less than three minutes before impact, there was little that could be achieved with that small a warning window. Klaxons sounded all over Lhasa and everybody dumped what they were doing on the tarmac and began running for cover. Within thirty seconds the first Brahmos cruise-missile flashed over the peaks south of Lhasa and dived into the airport, the sun glinting over its sleek metallic body. The air-defense batteries around Lhasa managed to fire several missiles into the air against the Indian missiles, but the latter were just too fast to be intercepted at this late a stage in their flight.
The ground shook like an earthquake.
The two Chinese Il-76s on the ground didn’t stand a chance. The Indian DIPAC had been watching the Chinese activities at Lhasa for hours now. They knew that a certain section of the tarmac was always being occupied by the incoming Il-76s and they had promptly handed over that piece of intelligence information to the army and the air-force.
The first missile slammed into the ground between the two parked aircraft. Such was the accuracy of the Brahmos Block-II. As the wall of concrete and fire expanded outwards and enveloped the two aircraft in split seconds, both aircraft and the PLA’s precious supplies inside them were instantly shredded. The shockwave from the explosion rippled through the tarmac into all of the airport buildings and facilities…
Even as the shockwave from the first detonation expanded outwards, the second missile slammed into the main terminal building at the airport and decimated it with its large explosive warhead. The debris was still falling when two other Brahmos missiles slammed into sections of the main runway at almost equal intervals and cratered sections of it, dividing the runway into three one-third sections unusable to any but the lightest of aircraft. No aircraft could now use this runway for the time being. The fifth missile slammed into the parked J-8IIs on the other side of the tarmac and destroyed them. When that fireball rose into the sky like a mushroom cloud of smoke and dust several seconds later, it had left a large shallow crater where the parked J-8IIs had been.
The sixth and final missile slammed into the white radar dome of the long-range radar station manned by crews of the 42ND Radar Regiment south of Lhasa and destroyed the radar dome from the ground up. The station was mounted on flat terrain with long line-of-sights. When the fireball rose underneath the station and the dome shredded into a thousand fragments, it had a lot of audience from the PLA convoys driving down the roads nearby towards the Chumbi valley…
The strike neutralized all aerial resupply operations at Lhasa airport in fewer than two minutes. Moreover, long-range radar support for the southern skies now had a large hole carved inside. At Chengdu, an angered Chen was left with no choice but to divert all aircraft flying overhead to other airbases in the north and east.
As the mushroom cloud over the airport dissipated and smoke and debris settled around the airport, the blue skies above no longer had circular contrails, only straight ones heading radially away…
Feng was finding himself in a difficult situation with Major-General Zhigao. The latter man had reminded Feng exactly what he thought of his posting to Kashgar minutes after he had landed at the airbase. But Chen outranked them both, so if he ordered them to work together, there was little choice in the matter. Zhigao had left Feng to his work without further ado after the initial meeting in his office. With that behind him, Feng had hoped his existence here would prove easier. But that was not to be.
As he had come to discover in his few hours here, Zhigao was not a realist. He was a supreme optimist in his own abilities as commander. And that was dangerous for both himself as well as the men under his command. Feng noticed that Zhigao had more bluster in him than battlefield competence. The lack of the latter was not uncommon within the PLAAF, as Feng, Chen and Wencang all knew. The Chinese had not fought an air war since the Korean War. They had certainly not done so against any decent air-force in the last few decades. They had a whole lot of shiny new equipment and young officers trained on the technical aspects.