He switched comms to his flight: “gents, here we go. Over the border and taking the fight to the enemy. We have twelve enemy F-16s and six Mirage birds surging east in front of their airborne radar. Mongol-two has committed us to the fight alongside the Flankers. We are keeping a low profile. Dive for the soup below. Mongol-two will be leading us. We are going under the fight between the Flankers and the enemy birds. Our goal is the enemy airborne radar. Keep a tight formation and follow my lead. Give me an affirm chime!”
“Affirm, dagger-leader”
“Dagger-three copies all.”
“Wilco from dagger-four.”
All right, here we go… Grewal thought. To his north, he saw the sixteen friendly Su-30 “Flankers” of No. 8 squadron in four finger-four flights spreading into a line-abreast formation. They were going parallel to him. This force of heavy fighters was aptly named “warhammer”. A similar group of eight Su-30s to the north, call-sign “scabbard”, was already a veteran of the war when they had led the fighter sweeps during the strikes in Kashmir.
These powerful Flankers would draw fire and mix it with the Pakistani F-16s and Mirage-IIIs. They would not worry about the enemy Erieye airborne-radar aircraft behind. Warhammer and scabbard were the blunt tools of this fight.
I guess that makes us the scalpel! Grewal lowered his helmet-mounted night-optics. The black-blue-white environment around him gave way to the green-white-black hell-scape he had gotten used to. In many ways the analogy of a scalpel was true. The Su-30 drivers had come out of the China war with a sense of pride, their chests swollen. They had been the knife that had been used to slit the Chinese air-force’s wrist over Tibet. And despite losses, they had established dominance both within air-force circles as well as in the hearts of their enemies. Now their pilots exuded confidence.
As if to dramatize that dominance, Grewal saw them pull ahead into a long, line-abreast formation along the north-south axis. He could see the glowing exhausts of their twin-engines. No tactical formations, no flanking maneuvers here. They were letting the Pakistani pilots know who the big dogs were. Wars are often won in the minds even before the first shots are fired. Would the Pakistani pilots see their impending doom and back off?
Perhaps not… Grewal thought as the Flankers punched afterburners in unison and thundered across the border…
“Dagger-leader this is mongol-two. Warhammer and scabbard are committed. Come to bearing two-zero-zero.”
“Wilco.”
Grewal flipped his LCA to the port and dived into the cloud floor. Within seconds the muck hit the windscreen and washed all over his aircraft. He pulled out under the clouds and was greeted with a nightmarish view of the border. White tracers were flying across both sides of the border and artillery explosions were ripping up the border posts on both sides. The flashes were enhanced on all their optics. He saw tracers climbing up towards him and his pilots…
“Dagger! Triple-A fire coming up! Break! Break! Break!”
Grewal flipped his aircraft violently whilst still diving. The tracer rounds snaked past his cockpit and flashes erupted on all sides, rocking his small fighter around. He managed to trace the fire all the way to the source on the ground below. It was then that the horror of the situation struck him: “mongol-two, this is dagger! We are taking friendly triple-A fire from forward-deployed ground units! I…” the thunderclap from a nearby string of detonations jerked his aircraft aside.
“Say your last, dagger! Mongol-two reading you one-by-five!”
No shit! He growled and snapped to low level to evade the consistent barrage being put up in a box around him. The amount of fire from the army guns below was considerable. Grewal thanked his stars that these were not radar directed, else he and his pilots might have been ripped to shreds…
“Mongol-two! Get those friendly triple-A bastards to stop shooting at their own air-force!” Grewal thundered.
“Roger, dagger. Stand by…” the voice trailed off.
Grewal had his hands full. He was still violently evading the ground fire when the explosions stopped just as abruptly as they had started. The last of the tracers flew off into the cloud cover above them.
“Dagger, confirm that the triple-A has stopped. Over.”
“Roger, mongol-two. Ground fire has ceased. Many thanks!” Grewal said without hiding the relief. The last thing he wanted was fratricide. But his LCA did look like a Pakistani Mirage in its silhouette. Especially against a light background and even more so when he was flashing above Indian ground forces. He realized that the army gunners below were probably on hair-trigger mode.
Not an auspicious start… He saw the other three LCAs pulling up on either side of him. All three of them shared black-scars and grime from the explosions. He wondered what his own aircraft looked like.
The cloud-cover above them flickered with light. Their onboard radar-warning-receivers were screeching in his ears as they detected all sorts of enemy threats. Grewal’s heart missed a beat when the radio suddenly squawked: “mongol-two here. Warhammer and scabbard have engaged the enemy. Your target is at fifty kilometers west, twenty-thousand feet. Dagger has the ball. Go get them!”
“Wilco, Mongol-two.” All right.
Grewal powered up the throttle and pushed it into afterburner. The engine rumbled to life and the sudden acceleration of the afterburning fuel punched the aircraft forward. They were eating up fuel rapidly now. But they also knew that the Pakistani Erieye radar crew would pick them up against the ground clutter at any moment considering their close proximity. Grewal could not allow them to escape.
A Pakistani Mirage-III flashed through the clouds as it dived towards the west. Grewal and his pilots saw in amazement as the Pakistani aircraft thundered high above their heads, oblivious to the four small Indian fighters climbing from below. Grewal almost switched to guns to engage before two Su-30s punched through the cloud cover, chasing the lone Pakistani pilot across the sky. The lead Su-30 fired a R-73 heat-seeking missile that flew into the flares and chaff punched out by the desperate Pakistani pilot. But the Flanker drivers were not giving up that easy. The leader and his wingman lined up behind the wildly evading Mirage-III pilot. Tracers filled the sky before some of them found their mark. The Pakistani aircraft turned into a shower of sparks and smoke before it struck the ground in a fireball. The two Su-30s punched afterburners and climbed into the cloud cover, disappearing out of view.
God! These guys aren’t taking any prisoners today! Grewal thought as he climbed into the clouds and continued west. They broke through the clouds and the starry night re-emerged. He saw the wild melee of F-16s, Flankers and Mirage-IIIs behind them to the east. And to the west, the radar blips showed the Erieye and its two F-16 escorts. The Pakistani pilots and crew on board the Erieye were already evading and diving away, having detected the incoming Indian threat. The two F-16s went active on their radars as they attempted to destroy the threat to their airborne-control aircraft.
Grewal had already selected his Astra BVR missile on the inner pylons of his aircraft. The two F-16s became visible on his HUD as dotted diamonds. The audio tone in his helmet changed as he managed a lock. The weapon release was near instantaneous after he depressed the launch button on his control stick. The LCA became lighter and climbed a bit as the Astra missile fell away and lit its rocket engine, propelling it past the launch aircraft. Three other missiles from Dagger flight did the same. Unlike the R-77, the Astra left a nearly invisible exhaust. Perhaps the night-optics on board the two F-16s would enhance it enough to make it visible. But it would still be difficult for the two Pakistani pilots to escape all four missiles…