The BMD-3 is a tracked airborne combat vehicle weighing about 15 tons and armed to the teeth with no less than two machine guns, a 30mm automatic grenade launcher, an anti-tank rocket launcher and a 30mm rapid-fire cannon main gun. It has a track commander/gunner and a driver. An airborne infantry team (half a squad) of five operate its other weapons or can dismount for close assault. The lightly armored BMD-3 was vulnerable to .50 cal fire from any angle other than the direct front, but the people who used it counted on surprise and shock to overwhelm their enemies before they could mount an effective defense. This is why the Russians developed the retro-rocket pallet — it enabled the armored airborne infantry to drop into combat inside their vehicles, ready to go as soon as they hit the ground. The system was not without its problems, however; sometimes the rockets failed to ignite leaving the crew either dead or with broken backs. Other times not all of the solid-fueled rockets would ignite. When this happened, the pallet would turn cartwheels in the air before landing, usually upside-down. Needless to say, making a training jump in such a contraption was not viewed as a good use of highly trained airborne soldiers — even by the PLA. Making such a jump in combat was a different story. The PLA generals calculated that the extra dead crew or two was well worth the minutes shaved off the time needed to get into the fight.
Rez decided he had to see more of the situation. An intelligence officer is useless without some data to process. He burst out of the building at a low crouch and kneeled next to the tank. His knee sank into something soft. The officer looked down. He was kneeling on the thigh of the airborne troop he killed not a minute before. The tank had run over the head and shoulders of the corpse and blood oozed through its wide metal tracks. Rez didn’t have time to get sick. He looked left and right and up — nothing, the tank blocked the view of the battlefield.
Major Ramirez was about to stand up to peer around the tank when he heard Colonel Flint’s voice, “What the hell’s going on?”
“Airborne! They’re dropping armor too! Soviet BMDs!” (Every officer who entered the military before 1991 had a hard time saying, “Russian” when referring to equipment designed and built by the old Soviet empire.) Just as Rez turned his head back towards the tank, the turbine’s pitch increased and the tanked lurched ahead leaving him in the open. For split second, just enough to take in the view of most of the airport’s runway, Rez had a perfect understanding of the battle. The PLA was in the process of landing at least a battalion of airborne supported by probably a company of BMDs (about 450 soldiers and ten armored vehicles). If the Chinese could seize the airport then air-landing forces couldn’t be far behind. The Marines had to defend the airport or all was lost.
Rez ducked, spun around on his heels, and dove for the doorframe just as the BMD charged out from behind its settling parachute. Colonel Flint could see gun flashes from the right bow side of the vehicle. Two holes the size of cantaloupes were blown through the cement wall to the right of the door frame. Rez landed between the colonel’s legs. An instant later, the tank, which had rapidly driven off to the right to acquire the small airborne vehicle, fired. A large ball of superheated gas exploded out of the tank’s main gun. Not 100 meters away the BMD erupted in a ball of fire. The BMD’s small, frying pan-shaped turret went flying skyward along with pieces of something human. Flint stood just three feet inside the doorway, concealed by shadow, gaping at the horribly awesome sight. The turret arced up, spinning slowly like an oblong Frisbee due to the off-center mass of its 30mm gun. The sight was so fantastic, Flint couldn’t help but to watch as the turret sailed down and crashed into the cement not 20 feet away from the door. It bounced once, flipping upside-down, and landed on the body of the paratrooper Rez shot two minutes before. Only the man’s legs were sticking out from under the smoking turret.
Backing up, Flint burst out, “Shit!”
Rez just lay on the ground for a few seconds, panting.
The opening battle for Kaohsiung International Airport wasn’t a fair fight. Most military professionals would rather wage an unfair fight. Their aim is not to go head-to-head with the enemy’s strength, but rather to hit him in a fashion that makes it difficult if not impossible for the enemy to hit back. In short order the Marines of the 31st MEU employed four M1A1 tanks, two Whiskey Cobra gunships, and two rifle companies supported by five .50 cal heavy machine guns and four 81mm mortars against the enemy parachute battalion. The result was predictable. The airborne troops, told only an hour before by their recon that the airport was clear, were cut down or taken prisoner (their scout was captured by the suddenly arriving Marines before he could provide headquarters with a situation update). The PLA lost all ten BMDs, two supporting helicopter gunships that flew across the Taiwan Strait to support the assault, 264 men killed and 103 captured. Of the 448 elite PLA paratroopers who made the drop, only 81 escaped to disperse around the light industrial buildings near the airport. Colonel Flint would ask the soon to arrive ROC Army reserve unit to hunt these men down to reduce the likelihood that any might report on the airport defender’s dispositions. In short, the PLA brought a knife to a gunfight.
It was eleven o’clock on Saturday. Over the entire length and breadth of the island the ROC forces began to understand they were in a fight for their very existence.
Communication was almost impossible.
The incapacitating agents temporarily decapitated the civilian leadership in Taipei. If they survived their 12 hours of LSD hallucinations without being killed or captured, they might make a contribution to the war effort, but for now, they were quite literally, insane. On key landing beaches or in ports, a different chemical agent was used to rob the defenders of their mental initiative. Several sites where Taiwan’s mobile and armored forces were based were hit with a third type of agent designed to maximize confusion.
China’s genetically engineered influenza attack was having the most severe immediate impact on the armed forces. Fully half of Taiwan’s military was sick with the flu. Almost half of those were confined to bed rest (many should have been in the hospital but the hospitals were filled to capacity with the very old and the very young).
Lastly, China’s conventional assault was going well (with the sole exception of the attack on Kaohsiung). The E-bombs destroyed half of Taiwan’s air force and now China’s advanced Russian-built fighters ruled the skies over the battlefield. All four of Taiwan’s major ports were under assault and some 50,000 troops were on their way by air and sea within the next 24 hours to reinforce the almost 20,000 troops already on the island.
In spite of their disadvantages, the ROC Army still had 195,000 troops on Taiwan — even with half of these ill, they would outnumber the PLA for at least another day, maybe two. To be effective, however, a military force must be able to do three things: shoot, move, and communicate. The first two the Chinese made difficult for the Taiwanese, the last wasn’t happening much at all yet.
Taiwan’s military forces tried as best they could to restore communications. All across Taiwan the military dipped into their extensive underground bunker network to bring carefully stored radios out of their aluminized plastic wrappings. Within two hours, a series of line-of-sight tactical FM radios began to carry a fraction of the needed communications traffic of modern war. Using airborne electronic warfare equipment designed with the help of Russian engineers, the Chinese jammed some signals and eavesdropped on others (their task made all the easier by the fact that so few radios were working). In spite of the PLA’s attempts to shut down Taiwan’s radio traffic, some data did get through. The officers in the bunkers asked and answered questions. They shared information. Gradually, a rough picture emerged of the situation. But there wasn’t much Taiwan could do about it — yet.