They don’t leave anything unfinished, do they?
Adesara was quietly worried about the upcoming fight. But for the Chinese field gunners battering away at his positions, he had a special welcome that was already being executed.
“Five kilometers…” the same soldier’s voice came through on the radio. Adesara thought it sounded more strained than before. He could understand that. There were very few things in the world as scary as seeing a line of tanks heading straight for you when all you have is a rifle. It took training and courage to keep calm in these situations. But in that, he knew he had the finest soldiers around. They would not break under the increasing strain. Perhaps not even after the tanks had rolled over their positions?
Adesara was watching the UAV feed on the battlefield computers in his command center. The views had changed from infrared to visual by now. He could see the very slowly advancing T-99 tanks with their rotating turrets.
The Chinese gunners were looking for targets too…
Adesara grabbed his binoculars and stepped outside the bunker as the gravel was still raining all around. He looked to the Major in charge of his anti-tank teams and nodded. The latter turned to his men:
“Milan crews forward!”
South of the airstrip at DBO, a group of three truck-mounted radars remained camouflaged under snow-white netting. The radars were modern and did not require physical movement. Their beams were moved electronically. So there was no motion from that location as the phased-array radars quietly stared into the skies east and beyond the LAC, tracking the incoming artillery shells as they flew on their projectile paths towards the airstrip and other defensive positions around DBO.
In the command vehicle, a Major and his group of NCOs punched in the target information data into their systems and then digitally transmitted them up the Indian Army’s Artillery Combat Command and Control System or ACCCS, also known by the name “Shakti”. This system received inputs from all such sensors including ground based weapon-locating-radars or WLRs, remotely piloted vehicles and even satellites to paint a picture of potential targets to be hit and destroyed by artillery assets. These latter could include anything from a battery of guns to a high-tech MLRS vehicle or even a tactical cruise-missile or ballistic-missile regiment, depending on the situation.
Out here, near the airstrip, that information got distributed over to the battery of Smerch launchers deployed further down the valley near Saser…
The launch barrels elevated on to a high zenith launch angle and the correct azimuth before stabilizing and locked into position. Two minutes later the early morning sunlight was snubbed out by the salvo launch of heavy MLRS rockets in quick successions. The rockets raced into the sky, leaving behind a lingering dust cloud.
East of the LAC, the Chinese field gunners had little warning.
The morning sunlight transformed into a shadow after a series of small thuds. Chinese soldiers working on their guns jerked their heads upward to see a cloud of small blacks specks scattered across the gray skies. The incoming cluster munitions slammed into their targets split seconds later…
As the fireballs exploding on the airstrip at DBO stopped abruptly in the seconds after the strike, the Indian artillery counter-response had just begun. All along the Ladakh front, battery after battery of Chinese field guns and short-range rocket-launchers were snubbed out by long-range Smerch MLRS systems in those first few hours of the second day.
But the battle for Ladakh had just begun.
The Milan anti-tank guided-missile crews heard small thuds of their own as their anti-tank missiles leaped out of their canisters and streaked eastwards. Opposite the missiles was a wall of Chinese vehicles slowly trampling over the gravel as they headed westwards to the airstrip. The line of sixteen T-99s was interspersed with a dozen ZBD infantry-fighting-vehicles. Behind that line was the second line of vehicles with the same vehicle types but inversed composition. The idea behind that was that the first wave was expecting to take on Indian amour and the second wave would mop up the infantry. A third wave was spread out into platoon sized formations.
The Indian anti-tank teams were aiming for the tanks. And as far as they were concerned, this wave was as good as dead. Adesara and his staff were obviously more concerned knowing as they did the real depth of the enemy force in front of them.
By this time the wave of missiles were streaking towards the tanks…
The Chinese T-99 tank crews saw, analyzed and reacted to the threat heading towards them as they had been trained to do. The first armor line instantly disappeared behind a manmade mist.
The entire formation then executed a textbook spread maneuver and increased the distances between their ranks. The line was now spread out and still detonating aerosol mixtures around themselves to shield from the missile-gunner’s optics. They were almost within main-gun range of the Indian positions…
The Indian gunners had precious seconds to retarget their missiles. Most of them managed to stick to their original targets, while others had to fix on to another vehicle or a nearby ZBD. The eight Milan missiles slashed into the Chinese lines a split second later.
Adesara looked with delight as five T-99s went up in fireballs amidst the advancing tank line. The burning hulks staggered to a stop before being gripped by secondary explosions as their internal fuel and ammo lit up. Three ZBDs were also now nothing more than furiously burning chasses.
By now both sides were within range of their main-guns and in an ear shattering burst of fire the remaining eleven T-99s and four Indian T-72Ms in hull down positions opened up with sabot rounds.
That first exchange killed another three T-99s, one ZBD and one T-72M. Three Milan missile teams were killed as they attempted a second launch attempt from their trenches. On both sides the remaining crews reloaded within seconds before a second burst of gunfire sounded out while the infantry on both sides were left feeling vulnerable and impotent in the deadly fusillade.
Adesara watched another two T-99s and another T-72M go up under a fireball before he picked up the radio and called up Colonel Sudarshan and his BMP force to the southeast. The Chinese first line of armor, or what was left of it, was now closing to two kilometers and was well within the Indian side of the LAC…
The twelve BMPs comprising three platoons under Colonel Sudarshan had splashed across the semi-frozen waters of the Chip-Chap River through a shallow fjord and had raced off to the southeast leading a dust cloud raised by their tracks. The specialist anti-tank platoon of four modified BMPs had silently peeled off inside that large dust cloud. Sudarshan was racing his BMP-IIs further southeast than where his anti-tank platoon had peeled off so that as far as the Chinese UAVs overhead were concerned, he was slicing across the Chinese advance from the south as a right hook maneuver.
In reality the entire move was a farce designed to draw the Chinese to the wrong conclusions.
And while the auto-cannons of his eight BMP-IIs were effective and were savaging the Chinese recon troops immediately at the border, making no attempt to mask their envelopment, the real claw of the pincer was already heading for the Chinese left flank.
But the Chinese were also reacting to this threat. The third line independent platoons of the armor advance were already being diverted to the south by the Chinese brigade commander to face Sudarshan’s BMP-IIs head on. Unfortunately, they bypassed the real threat to their main force on their right flank…