The concentrated cloud of sparks and dust raised by the impact of the munitions was interspersed with fireballs and secondary explosions as several ZBDs were destroyed.
The Indian defenses were instantly filled with shouts of joy from the besieged Indian troopers. The T-99s were made of sterner stuff and did not go up in fireballs. But their tracks lay shattered and several of them had their engine compartments penetrated by red-hot shrapnel. They were now nothing more than ticking time bombs; waiting to go off just as leaking fuel came in contact. The Chinese tank crews realized the danger and began jumping out of the turrets within view of the Indian Gorkhas to the west…
There was no mercy.
A large burst of rifle fire from more than two hundred Indian soldiers quickly claimed almost all of the Chinese tank crews within moments. As the dead bodies continued to be riddled with impacting bullets, company and platoon commanders had to manually go down the lines shouting “cease fire!” orders.
But the battle was not over yet.
Several Chinese ZBDs were still alive and kicking as the smoke and dust clouds from the cluster-munitions attack began to settle down. They began engaging the Indian infantry positions with cannon fire, sending the defenders diving and crashing for cover as the rounds again began to kick up dust around their positions. The Chinese gunners had also seen what the Gorkhas had done to their comrades just moments before.
Bitterness went both ways in the desperate battle for DBO.
Then there were more high-frequency thud noises and the fire on Indian positions from the Chinese vehicles abruptly stopped. Brigadier Adesara and his staff were sent ducking for cover as the two Indian Jaguars streaked overhead at suicidal low altitude as they recovered from their shallow strafing dive right above the trenches. As the dust settled, Adesara and his officers stumbled out of their bunker to see another three ZBDs dead in their tracks and spewing fire from their hatches. All three vehicles had large holes on their armor plating. The Jaguar cannon rounds were deadly against the thin armor skins…
And then it stopped.
As Adesara and his men watched, the few surviving ZBDs and the single T-99 remaining from the Chinese armor force began pulling back and deploying aerosol screens.
But the Chinese were far from beaten. Any thought that Brigadier Adesara might have had to advance back to the mangled remains of his citadel defensive lines were cut short as a number of Chinese artillery proximity-fused shells detonated above his trenches, burying some of them and killing several of his men. But despite the falling gravel and rocks, Adesara smiled, for he understood: the first Chinese ground offensive to capture Daulat-beg-oldi and the Karakoram pass had been broken.
The story was the same on the south banks.
Colonel Sudarshan slammed open the hatch of his battered BMP-II to see columns of rising smoke all along the northern horizon. But the Chinese were only down, not out. He brought up his binoculars to see several anti-air vehicles also moving into position behind the Chinese lines…
Sudarshan realized what had happened. The Chinese armor had been forced too far forward by the tactical fighting retreat of the defenders. The strung out Chinese vehicles had been mauled by the savage air attack mainly because their supporting anti-air vehicles had been too far behind to support.
That was a tactical mistake.
But you can bet your ass they won’t repeat that mistake again!
Sudarshan lowered his binoculars and looked around at the other dust and soot covered BMP-II parked to his right. This was the only other survivor from his original force of eight BMP-IIs from the Alpha squadron of the 10TH Mechanized Battalion. To his left he saw the three remaining NAMICAs from his anti-tank platoon in their prepared positions. The fourth of their pack was burning furiously half a kilometer to the north. Casualties had been high for the 10TH Mechanized on this day.
But they had held their ground!
With the current force levels, there was no question of counterattack until the main bulk of the 10TH Mechanized arrived from Shyok to Saser to DBO and was assembled into a unified and cohesive fist. With the Chinese bringing up their own reinforcements, it was now a race where the side that brought up its reinforcements faster, would win.
The silence of the night above the ridges was shattered as four waves of four Jaguar aircraft each from the No. 5 ‘Tuskers’ Squadron of the IAF streaked above Rezang-La and flew east, crossing the border with Tibet a few seconds later.
The Chinese soldiers on the ground fighting opposite Indians soldiers from XV Corps only heard the sounds of the jets before all sixteen Indian aircraft flashed overhead in the dark night skies and disappeared beyond the next set of ridges deep into Tibet…
“Okay. That marks seventeen Big-Birds deployed along this threat axis,” the EW-operator noted over the intercom.
“These Buk radars here south of the ingress route and these older LR surveillance emissions are highly familiar. We have countermeasures for those. What about the Big-Bird radars? Think we can blind them?” the ARC mission-commander asked.
“That’s the unknown in this equation. The Chinese have never really deployed these S-300s so far south before. This is just about our first look at these systems. And our own experience proves these to be highly capable. We just don’t have the EW power for even attempting a serious blackout of these systems,” the EW-operator replied.
He punched in the priorities for the emission sources in order of proximity of the known ingress route of the Jaguars.
“ECM support from SOCOM aircraft?”
“We can use them effectively if we deploy them to the south against the southern half of these systems. Even there they will be limited for use against the Buk and these three LR radars. That effectively clears an ingress path. But the S-300s will remain active as far as we can tell.”
“I know. But we have what we have. Let’s work from there. We don’t have time to spare. Work up the procedures for the Buk and LR emissions in the southern sector. I will coordinate with the SOCOM EW people so that they know their targets. Once that is done, work up a diagnostic on the S-300 emissions. We may find a weakness yet.”
The sixteen Su-30s began spreading out from their Box-Four formations into a line abreast pattern as they entered the skies over southern Ladakh and headed northeast. The wings were clean of all ordinances except for the EW pods and a single large weapon on the centerline pylon…
Now the air war really begins.
Feng thought as he walked into the operations center and handed his coat to his orderly. His meeting with Chen and Wencang had been long and excruciating, but productive. He had outlined to them what all had gone wrong and what all hadn’t. He also outlined his plans for force resurrection by leeching units from other MRAFs. He had also talked about his plans for wrenching control of the skies above Ladakh from the Indians.