“One-three-five, relative!”
Grewal ignored the curt response from Verma. He flipped his aircraft and brought it about on a easterly heading and dived for the deck. Two of the Babur missile’s engine exhausts showed up on his night-optics as white balls of light…
“Dagger-actual has visual on two inbounds heading south in general direction of Bathinda!”
“Dagger-three has visual on one inbound heading east!”
“Dagger-four also has visual on one inbound!”
Grewal added it up in his head. The numbers came up short. What happened to the other missiles?
Shit! No time. He enabled the infrared guidance on his R-73 heat-seeking missile. It had no difficulty locking on to that massive thermal plume from the Babur missiles in front of him. The enemy missiles were chugging along at a cruising speed, oblivious to the threat materializing to their rear. Grewal heard the audio tone of missile-lock and depressed the launch button on his control stick. The shower of white blanketed his vision abruptly as the R-73 leapt off the rails and fell lower, matching the altitude of the Babur missiles. Two seconds later it exploded behind one of them in a ball of orange-yellow flame, shredding the target into fragments. The fragments struck the farmland below in a shower of sparks as Grewal’s LCA thundered overhead.
As he banked, he saw his wingman destroying the other Babur missile before pulling above the exploding fireball. The underneath of his LCA was momentarily lit up in the glow of the explosion. Grewal rubbed his eyes with his gloved fingers whilst climbing up towards the clouds. His radio squawked: “dagger-three here: we splashed two more targets! No more inbounds to be seen. Over.”
“Roger. Good job, gentlemen!” Grewal shook his head and cleared his vision before lowering his night-optics again. “Formate with me and return to altitude! We are burning up a lot of fuel down here!”
“Wilco.”
Hel then changed frequencies: “mongol-two, we splashed four enemy missiles and are awaiting vectors. Over.”
“Negative on vectors, dagger. We count eight missile strikes against friendly ground units. No more targets to intercept.” Grewal tightened his grip around the control-stick. Despite their efforts, eight missiles had broken through to their targets and struck. Only god knew how many lives had been lost…
The radio chimed in after several seconds of silence: “dagger, what’s your combat status?”
“All green, mongol-two. Dagger is still in the fight.” Grewal checked the fuel and weapons indicators. Yup. All green.
“Roger. Move to vector three-five at ten-thousand feet and hold station.” The four LCAs broke through the cloud cover and were once again staring at the starlit skies above. Grewal could now see numerous sets of lights showing up on the horizon. A lot of friendly combat aircraft were collecting in the skies around him.
“Dagger requesting sit-rep, mongol-two.” He was not one to sit in the dark while the war lit up around his ears. He needed to know what the threat picture was. The onboard radar on the LCA was meant to seek and destroy, not scan the skies like a flashlight in the dark. That was Verma’s job.
“Sitrep is fluid, dagger. Will advise momentarily.”
“Yeah. I guess we will just twiddle our thumbs in the meantime then!” Grewal added after disabling the voice transmit.
“Mongol-two-three here, two long-range mobile radar sources detected on bearing two-five-two and three-one-five magnetic! Airborne. And coming over the horizon.”
Verma looked up from the comms console and to the EW operator who had called out the warning. He then pressed the transmit button on his intercom: “designation and source?”
“Bandit on bearing three-one-five is inbound southeast. Possible source is Peshawar. Bandit on bearing two-five-two is inbound easterly. Possible source is Multan. Tagging as bandits vortex-one and vortex-two. Beginning track.” Verma saw the EW operator use the control mouse on his console to tag the contacts. The screen panel to the side immediately populated with the two active sources: VORTEX-ONE and VORTEX-TWO.
The Phalcon was detecting these two inbound sources based on their long-wavelength radar signatures over the horizon long before the aircraft emitting these signals was detected. Much like how a man holding a torch in the dark is seen long before he sees what he is looking for, the EW operators on the Phalcon were seeing the light of the torch emitted by these two Pakistani airborne-radar aircraft.
But who were they? Verma mulled that over. Peshawar made sense for the Pakistani air-force. It was far enough behind the border to safely place their precious airborne control assets. But Multan was far closer to border. Pakistani aircraft based there were effectively forward-deployed. It was a risky place to base critical airborne-control aircraft.
They must know where we are the same way we know about them. At least we must run with that assumption… Verma thought.
The EW operator came back on comms: “vortex-two has boosted signal strength to full power!”
They are looking for a fight… Verma concluded and changed comms to the flight controllers: “mongol-two-five and — two-six, be advised that we have inbound enemy airborne-control aircraft to the south and west. Contacts designated vortex-one and — two. They will have strong protection centered around the control aircraft. Vortex-two is the higher priority. I want that bird taken down before we are forced to split resources in two directions. Divert flights as necessary. Out.”
Verma watched as his crew went to work relaying his orders to combat flight commanders whose aircraft were filling up the skies all around him. He felt the sudden sensation of sweat and absently looked at his hands, which had become sweaty. Perhaps a part of him knew what he was committing his fighter pilots to. The Pakistanis liked to overrate their equipment and tactics beyond reality, but they were still deadly. He knew he was going to lose pilots and airframes tonight. But that was war. As commander, his job was to ensure that the losses incurred amounted to something, instead of nothing. Was this a fight he wanted to commit to?
That was a question as old as war itself. Which battles should a commander commit to? Which others to retreat from? Good commanders were those that knew the difference. Bad commanders committed to every fight. The idea was to win. If it required him to withdraw his forces from one front and commit them to the other, then that was what he would do.
This was a fight he wanted to commit to. The Pakistanis only had a handful of airborne-control aircraft. Taking them out quick and dirty would nullify the PAF’s ability to wage war in the skies, leaving the Indians in control. The side that lost its airspace, lost control of the war.
Verma awoke from his reverie and found himself staring at his palms. He wiped them on the side of his flight-suit and took a deep breath as the Phalcon controllers handed the fight over to the fighter flights. He reminded himself that there was, after all, yet another rule to war: once committed, there were no if’s and buts allowed. Finish the fight. Fight to win.
Grewal copied the message from the Phalcon and took a deep breath. He transitioned mentally to what needed to be done now. He gripped the control stick tighter and could feel his senses moving into hyper-drive. Everything registered in his mind. The smell of the leather straps holding him to his seat. The fabric of the flight-suit. The rumble of the engine powering his aircraft. The individual stars in the night sky above. The bluish-white color of the clouds below.