The Seminar
Hassan threw everything he had into evading the two R-73s fired at extreme off-boresight. The enemy had not launched them to kill; they were meant to disrupt his aim, and the fact startled him. Indian pilots had improved far more than he thought possible. He was now drifting south of the glacier, heading vaguely west, unsure where to go. He knew he was alone. Rashid was probably finished; his radio had gone silent. Rashid's last transmission had confirmed three enemy aircraft, and a fourth would soon swing back. The area ratio was four to one.
"Falcon lead, remember the Afghan border operation?" Sami's voice on the radio.
"Group Captain, whatever you want to say, say it fast." Hassan replied irritably. He looked back: seven or eight kilometres behind, the Su-30 was turning. It would either maintain track or call in the others to box him in. The full four-ship would converge on him within minutes.
"Think of those valleys north of Kabul. The armorers and the MiG-23s. They tried to surround us, but we took a small risk and shook them off." Sami continued his coaching. Hassan now understood what the old man meant, and it had a certain logic. The terrain here did resemble northern Afghanistan. If he went lower, the APG-68 could provide terrain-following and avoidance, but the F-16 was not designed for extreme low-level penetration. How low he could fly depended on the pilot's nerve and skill. At the bottom of a valley, the danger was not the uneven ground below; the radar could not track or measure the canyon walls on either side.
"I'll trust you this once."
"Concentrate. You can do it."
Hassan had no other option. He scanned below, found the narrowest valley he could see, and nosed over into it. From this point on, the challenge was not the radar but the pilot's reflexes. He had to watch ahead, left, right, and the radio altimeter simultaneously. Years ago, when Sami and Hassan's two F-16As had been trapped by seven MiG fighters, Sami had done the same thing: dived into the Afghan mountain valleys. The gamble disrupted most of the enemy's tracking and aiming, but today was different. The Su-30's look-down capability far exceeded the old MiG-23's. Still, Hassan had no choice. The Su-30 carried more weapons than any fighter he had faced; survival meant flying where his pursuers could not follow.
Once the aircraft was roughly level, Hassan snatched a glance at his TEWS. The radar track behind him had not broken. The Su-30's look-down was plainly superior to the MiG-29's. But after a few dozen seconds, the track still could not complete a firing solution. Perhaps the old man was right after all. This near-suicidal flying could shake off the pursuit. But the effort was destroying him physically; the canyon walls seemed to press in on both wingtips. He could not keep this up much longer.
Goyal's flight had reassembled. They took turns flying above the valley, trying to maintain radar lock, but the F-16 was hugging the floor too tightly. Several times Goyal attempted a gun pass, but each time the F-16 slipped inside the funnel-shaped gunsight just as the Su-30 had to pull up to avoid the rock walls. The F-16 was insane; it was practically scraping the valley floor.
"Eagle flight, hold track. Don't let him climb. I'll bet he flies himself into a mountainside." Goyal told his wingmen.
"If he keeps this up a bit longer, he might have a chance," one wingman said. He had checked the terrain on the mission computer. If the F-16 stayed down, the valley would eventually wind deeper into the mountains and out of radar coverage entirely.
"Gentlemen, today's haul is already large enough. No point risking ourselves for the last F-16."
"Eagle calling Fortress, final update: what happened to our friends from the 1st Wing? Did the MiG-21s make it home?" Goyal asked the AWACS.
"Eagle lead, I'm sorry. One MiG-21 broke up in flight. Another failed to reach its airfield and crashed attempting a forced landing. Today's result is two and two."1
"What a waste. Those MiG-21s should never have tried to outrun the enemy. Lighting the afterburner ate up all their fuel." A pilot in the formation said bitterly.
"Don't say that. They did their best." Goyal replied. He knew the MiG-21 bait flight had flown too far and burned too much fuel in the chase. The pursuit with the F-16s had been unavoidable. Around Srinagar, mountains were everywhere; if you ran out of fuel, there was nowhere to put down.
Far away, at a base in central-western China, Lin Huaisheng stood at the podium continuing his briefing. He could not know about the air battle over the Pakistani border, though on the first day of the war he had already predicted that the Pakistan Air Force would not hold out long.
"As I said earlier, if this war can be prolonged until late September, then everything we are discussing today becomes meaningful. But I believe that without external support, Pakistan cannot achieve this. Unless India is very reluctant to commit ground forces. Consider this: if the Indian Army does not dare launch a ground offensive, they will have no reason to pull divisions from Assam and the illegally occupied state of Arunachal Pradesh.2 Right now ten full divisions are packed into that region, watching for us at every moment."
"What is the current posture in Arunachal Pradesh?" The colonel who liked questions asked again. This one was useful; it let Lin steer back to his planned sequence.
"As follows. Based on our current surveillance, the only regular Indian Army formation actually in the region is part of the 5th Mountain Division. The rest are paramilitary forces. The regulars are roughly on par with our own forces opposite them."
This answer relaxed some of the audience. They waited for Lin to tell them where the other nine divisions were. "Behind them, in central Assam, is the 21st Mountain Division. Behind that division is IV Corps headquarters. I believe these are intentionally set back from the line, lessons learned from 1962. On the Myanmar side is the 2nd Mountain Division. In the Imphal area, the 56th and 57th Infantry Divisions and III Corps headquarters. In the gap between Nepal and Bhutan, directly opposite the Nathu La pass, India has deployed XXXIII Corps, specifically the 17th, 20th, and 27th Mountain Divisions. This corps is clearly tasked with defending the Siliguri Corridor."
"That many?" someone below exclaimed.
"Yes. I estimate that roughly half the mountain divisions in the world today are in the Indian Army. And these are not all of them. India also has the 7th Mountain Division, a combat-experienced formation that is occasionally rotated to the Kashmir sector for operations against Pakistan."
1. Two and two: The final score of the Siachen engagement. India lost two MiG-21s (one structural failure, one crash-landed out of fuel) and destroyed two F-16 Block 52s (Falcon Four and Rashid). Hassan escaped by flying through a mountain valley too narrow for the Su-30s to follow. The MiG-21 losses were the price of the bait tactic; the F-16 losses are catastrophic for Pakistan, since only eight single-seat Block 52s exist and the US has frozen further deliveries. ↩
2. Arunachal Pradesh (阿鲁纳恰尔邦): The Chinese government refers to this Indian state as 藏南 (Southern Tibet) and considers it illegally occupied. Lin uses the Indian name but qualifies it as "illegally occupied," reflecting the PLA's official position. His briefing on Indian deployments in the region is the operational intelligence that would underpin Plan 4157B if it were activated. ↩