Squadron-Leader Khurana looked at the data in the head’s-up-display or HUD to see his aircraft’s current status.
Altitude was good.
Speed was good.
Attitude and azimuth was good.
Fuel was green.
The Fulcrum was cruising above the mountains with full weapons payload under the wings. Khurana looked left and right to see his finger-four formation of Mig-29s in perfect sync with his own. They were patrolling fifteen kilometers west of the Pangong-Tso just beyond the reach of the long-range S-300 batteries the Chinese had deployed in the Aksai Chin region over the last two months.
Khurana was making sure that his flight did not drift into the fuzzy detection range for those missile guidance radars. Like his own flight of four, all other Indian aircraft were staying away from the deadly S-300s…
And the sky was getting rather crowded from Khurana’s perspective.
The IAF was out in force in the Ladakh skies for the first phase of operation Phoenix. At the vanguard of the forming aerial armada were the Mig-29s of No. 28 Squadron deployed from Leh and Avantipur. They were tasked primarily for air-defense. Two-hundred kilometers to the south, a single Phalcon AWACS from No. 50 Squadron was also deployed in the skies above Himachal-Pradesh, providing airborne eyes and ears for Air-Marshal Bhosale at the WAC.
Then there were the two large groups of Su-30s just west of Khurana’s Mig-29s. One of these groups had eight Su-30s from No. 17 Squadron “Golden Arrows” and was on standby to support the Mig-29s should the PLAAF appear in force. These were also tasked with the job of protecting the Phalcon in case the Mig-29s were fully committed into the fight. Nobody at WAC wanted nasty Chinese anti-AWACS surprises at this time…
The Indians weren’t the only ones in the skies, of course.
Khurana was checking the output of the RWR. It was showing some ground-based, long-range Chinese radars in Aksai-Chin and to the north beyond the Karakoram pass. Then there was a single Chinese KJ-2000 AWACS aircraft flying far to the north. No fighter emissions were being detected. Chinese ones, that is.
A hundred kilometers to the west beyond the Siachen glacier, two Pakistani F-16 radars were active and tracking the Indian aerial armada gathering over Ladakh. That was potentially worrisome. The Pakistanis were acting aggressive already, and the war between India and China was less than a day old.
Khurana’s radio squawked with the chatter between the Phalcon controllers and the other group of four Su-30s now approaching the Aksai Chin…
The new set of four Su-30s, also from No. 17 Squadron, was now heading directly for the LAC. But they were not about to go straight into the kill-zones set up by Feng with the S-300s. These four aircraft were armed for a very specific job. And as such, they were not even going to enter the kill-zones over the Aksai Chin.
Each aircraft was armed with a single Brahmos Block-I ALCM under their fuselage pylon specially modified for this role. The four aircraft were spread out in line abreast formation and were barely a thousand feet above the peaks of the Ladakh Mountains below as they streaked towards the border. Just beyond the Chinese fuzzy detection range of the S-300 radars, the aircrafts accelerated to very high subsonic speeds and punched off their deadly cargo. The long tube shaped missiles fell cleanly off the four aircraft and ignited their motors…
By this time the four aircraft were already pulling tight pitch-out man oeuvres and headed back out of the Chinese radar detection.
The targeting information had been fed to the missile on-board flight computers before the aircraft had left the airbase at Pathankot. And they had been launched from one-hundred-fifty kilometers out, allowing for a time-to-target of around two minutes. The four missiles streaked across the Ladakh peaks with a massive shockwave thunderclap following in their wake…
They were detected immediately after release by the Chinese radars in the Aksai Chin and multiple S-300 systems engaged the four inbound missiles. Even with the phenomenal speeds and low reaction times involved, the S-300 proved to be a worthy opponent. These systems had been placed east of the highway through the Aksai Chin only because of the clear line of sight the plains provided to the defenders. Feng had done his homework.
Once the Brahmos missiles cleared the peaks between Galwan River to the north and Mobdi-la peaks to the south, they had entered relatively clear terrain in full view of these deadly defenses. With more than a dozen interceptor missiles targeting the four inbound Brahmos missiles, losses were inevitable…
Two of the four Brahmos missiles were destroyed by several interceptor missile hits. The remaining two, however, streaked past the defenses and slammed into two Big-Bird radar systems for an S-300 battery in the central sector. The result explosions destroyed both radar systems completely, shutting down the anti-missile radar capability for that sector of the highway. But Feng had designed the system to be robust and had included overlap with other nearby batteries and redundant auxiliary radar systems that went active minutes after the primary ones went down.
Back on board the Phalcon, Verma noted that there had been a temporary shutdown of radar activity in the central sector of the Aksai Chin. But several minutes later it had closed up again as new radar sources coming online were tagged by the onboard EW sensors.
Unless the coverage of this network of air-defenses was reduced permanently, the IAF Jaguar strike aircraft Squadrons could not dare penetrate the Aksai Chin region to take out the PLA targets nor could other fighters go north and take the fight to the PLAAF. This tickle of the Chinese air-defenses had confirmed for the WAC operations staff that they were now facing a highly integrated air-ground defense system. And unless it was taken out, the Chinese possessed the initiative in the skies over Ladakh.
Feng smiled as he went over the data from the Indian attempts to break through his air-defenses. It had not been surgically clean: he had taken losses. Two battery radars had been lost, but they had been replaced with the redundant ones nearby. If the Indians kept up the pressure, he would run out of these precious radar systems and then the gaps that had been created would stay opened.
In the meantime however, the system was buying time for his side.
By forcing the Indians to stay south and over their own airspace, the initiative was handed to Zhigao and his pilots. Feng still considered Zhigao’s plan to be ill-advised at best. But seeing the results in his hands he could not help but wonder if the plan just might work out…
The last of the Su-27s dropped below the altitude of the patrolling H-6U tankers and accelerated south just as the sun dipped below the horizon to the west, casting a pink-red glow to the skies around. The thirty Su-27s from the 16TH Air Regiment of Zhigao’s 6TH Fighter Division were stacked in groups of ten each.
All thirty aircraft were well north of the border with India and even further from the prying radars of the Phalcon. All thirty fighter radars were on standby mode at the moment. Zhigao had committed his entire Su-27 force for this mission to the level that Feng had to divert incoming reinforcements from the northeast to take over the vital job of protecting the two KJ-2000s over the Taklimakan desert.
Fifty kilometers behind the Su-27 force now heading south, three H-6M cruise-missile carriers and a single HD-6 electronic warfare aircraft from the 36TH Bomber Division released four long-range cruise-missiles each. That had been the only aspect of the mission on which Zhigao had agreed with Feng. While Zhigao was thoroughly intent on engaging the Indian fighters over Ladakh head on, Feng had convinced him to use the upcoming battle as a distraction to push through his cruise-missiles to their targets unhindered. The Indian pilots had proven particularly adept in the past day in intercepting the high flying, low speed cruise-missiles being launched by the 36TH Bomber Division in this sector. To the point that Feng had scrapped all future missions until more effective tactics could be employed. But Zhigao’s plans had presented him the opportunity he needed.