All in all, a formidable Pakistani counterattack.
But one that was hardly surprising to him. He knew what his armored taskforces had taken from the Pakistanis. He knew they would try to take it back. He also knew that the quashed resistance by the Pakistani forces inside Rahim Yar Khan would have reminded the Pakistani commanders that time was running out. The question had been when and how. Both answers were right here on the screen in front of him.
He turned to the staff around him: “all right gents, here comes the counterattack. We have prepared for this. Make the bastards pay!” He pounded the table with his fist for emphasis. The staff ran in different directions as though struck by lightning. He walked over to the comms personneclass="underline" “get me Lt-colonel Kulkarni out at waypoint red.”
“Steel-central to rhino-actual, over.”
After three seconds of static: “rhino-actual here. Send traffic. Over.”
One of the comms officers handed Sudarshan a speaker: “this is steel-actual. Be advised, we are detecting massed enemy movements towards you. You have inbound cruise-missiles and enemy attack choppers. And we are detecting mechanized columns of T-80s heading out to you from north and south.” He paused for that to sink in.
“Roger. Uh… rhino-actual copies all.”
Sudarshan noted the hesitation. So he decided to make things clear: “listen to me clearly, son. We can see all of these buggers moving in and we are not about to sit here wriggling our thumbs. We have anticipated this. Rhino is ordered to dig in. Finish off whatever we miss. But do not let the enemy take control of the highway. Is that understood?”
“Understood, sir. We will make our stand here.”
Sudarshan nodded: “good. Steel-actual, out.” He handed the speaker back to the comms officer. “Now this show is in the hands of the air-force. We better hope they pull it off, or rhino is dead meat.”
The airspace in western Rajasthan had been crowding up ever since mongol-three first detected the Babur cruise-missile launches near Quetta. Since the war had started, the unique radar signature of the ground-launched Pakistani missile had been passed around between all airborne-radar aircraft. This allowed for earlier warnings, as was the case here. Mongol-three had spent the warning time to bring up interceptor aircraft. They had also alerted the ground-based anti-air units of the army near Rahim Yar Khan. The latter would work as a second-layer defense, mopping up whatever the air-force fighters were unable to get.
The first set of aircraft that dived from altitude were a trio of Mirage-2000s from No. 1 Squadron. They would go after the inbound Babur missiles. The quartet of Su-30s at high-altitude switched afterburners and accelerated west to ensure that the PAF did not intervene. An indicator of how high this battle ranked in the Pakistani mindset, three F-16s were detected as they lifted off from Quetta. The Su-30s would ensure that they posed themselves as a solid wall between the F-16s and the diving Mirage-2000s. Considering the state of the PAF by this time in the war, the use of their remaining fighters as top cover for ground forces was noted by the mongol-three crew and passed on to commanders on the ground.
Further east, five Mig-27s thundered over the international border in the desert.. They would concentrate on the inbound enemy attack helicopters, forcing them to abandon their attack and retreat. Sending fixed-wing aircraft after low-flying helicopters was an iffy business. The best counter for an attack helicopter was another attack helicopter, especially in terrain where the attackers could stay out of range. Ideally, the Apache gunships would have gone after the Pakistani Cobras. But the Apaches were already moving into positions to play hell with the inbound T-80 columns.
To support this aerial armada, two IL-78 refueling tankers entered the cold skies above the Indian desert. They would stay in their patrols here waiting to refuel whoever was thirsty after combat. The airborne-radar however, had to be closer to the events. The Phalcon entered Pakistani airspace, trailing behind the fighters. It was technically over Indian controlled Pakistani land, but this marked the first time an Indian airborne-radar aircraft had penetrated enemy airspace.
And it wouldn’t be the last.
The Pakistani army was learning the hard way, what it meant to fight in skies controlled by the enemy. Their ground and aviation forces were paying the price. For the army-aviation forces, the reversals in the skies above had proven extremely costly. Amongst all elements that made up the army, the highest attrition rate had been within their helicopter squadrons. They had gone into battle armed with French puma transports, some American Huey transports and cobra gunships, Russian Mi-17 and Mi-35 gunships as well as an assortment of utility helicopters. Almost all of these had now been ravaged to the point of extinction.
The Mi-17 units had been used exclusively in Kashmir. They had the endurance and power to be able to fly in the very high-altitudes of the Himalayas. The UH-1 Huey units were being used in Punjab and Jammu along with the handful of Mi-35s in a gunship role.
Out here in the desert, however, the puma and cobra units were in play. Pakistan had a fleet of heavily-used and somewhat-outdated Cobra helicopters provided to them by the United-States in the 1980s. They had been used heavily against the Pakistani Taliban when they were fighting the Islamabad government. The two major units operating the helicopters were deeply-experienced in counterinsurgency combat, almost to the point of weariness.
But that experience didn’t necessarily translate into experience against a technologically-advanced enemy. And the initial mistakes made by the cobra crews against Indian defenses had cost them nearly a third of the overall fleet in the first few hours of the ground war.
Of course, that was when their air-force was putting up a stiff fight against the Indians. But as that cover had eroded, hour by hour, to the point of ineffectiveness, the cobra units had begun to feel the effect. What was, at first, a straight trip from the helipads to the battlefield had now degenerated into long, arduous and winding paths, avoiding the attention of Indian fighters above and airborne radars to the east. Flying had become an art of hop, skip and jump from cover to cover. And if they did somehow make it to the frontlines, the threat of anti-air units firing at them from all directions added to the stress. Finishing that, it was a similar trip back to the rearming point. Not only did all this dramatically increase the time between turnaround flights, reducing their presence and effect on the frontlines, it also exhausted the crews and wore down the machines. The resulting attrition was enormous. And the cobra units had become a nearly spent force.
This counteroffensive against Rahim Yar Khan required the units to muster all available machines. This force, once an awe-inspiring sight of dozens of machines, now represented just five helicopters. It was a sobering sight to the senior pilots and gunners as they had made their way to their parked helicopters.
One thing about fighting over home turf: the crew recovery from downed helicopters was relatively high, though there had been casualties. As a result, the units now had more pilots and gunners than they had machines. As a result, only the senior crews were going out on missions to maximize what little effect they could make…
As the five helicopters came to a hover over the trees on the west bank of the Indus river, their gunners were scanning for targets. There was no way to tell if the eastern bank was now occupied by the Indians or not. Chinese satellite pictures had shown fast-moving columns of Indian reconnaissance platoons. That meant that if the cobra crews got shot down on the eastern bank, there was no guarantee of recovery.