Television-Guided Bomb
Four MiG-27s flew north along the border at 500 metres. Somewhere off their right wing, several Su-30MKIs of the Rhino Squadron1 were covering them. The captain knew that "covering" likely meant a few fighters running parallel a hundred kilometres off. On Pandit's RWS, suspect L-band signals from the four o'clock outer ring lit at intervals; he knew the fools were trailing him steadily, but well behind. No surprise. The Su-30s carried long-range missiles, and dogfighting was something they took pains to avoid. The captain put no real faith in the Rhinos' protection. The only thing that could protect this formation was the surprise of the strike. He had calculated the time from border crossing to weapons release: a mere twenty minutes. If nothing went wrong in that window, he would count himself blessed.
"Scorpion lead, no enemy AWACS detected. You may cross the border at your discretion." A voice on the radio. The captain checked the GPS navigation on the HUD. The pre-set waypoint was at ten o'clock. He needed to bring the flight onto a slight new heading.
"Scorpion flight, prepare to turn."
He banked over and brought the flight round, dropping altitude sharply. As he descended, the radar sweeps from the covering aircraft behind him faded out. The effect he wanted: if his own friends could not find Scorpion flight, the enemy ground radar would have a still harder job tracking him. Only when his bombs landed would the Pakistan Air Force know what had happened, by which time he could break for the border at high speed.
"Check master arm switch."
"Bombs unsafed."
His instructions had a slight edge of impatience. By Indian Air Force regulation the fuses could be safed off the moment the border was crossed, and he was afraid that if he tried to do it later, in the rush of the run-in, he would be too busy to manage. The MiG-27 was a fussy aircraft.
The four MiG-27s spread their wings and slowed. They had picked up the Jhelum running 300 metres below them, in spate. No more radio navigation needed: follow the river and the dam would arrive of its own accord.
"Look. Tanks on the west bank." Arish in number two said.
Pandit looked. On the road by the river, two columns of lightly camouflaged military vehicles and tanks were moving north. He saw several trucks slam on the brakes, pull over, and dump their infantry into the brush. A few tank drivers had even abandoned their vehicles and rolled onto the ground in undignified haste. Pakistan's 2nd Armoured Brigade was plainly not a hardened veteran formation; the column had been thrown into confusion by a few aircraft passing overhead. From the look of them, they would not perform well in combat.
"Hmph. A rabble. They expect troops like that to defend Islamabad?" the captain said with contempt. The infantrymen looked, in fighting spirit, considerably worse than the extremists who were so hard to take alive.
"But will they report our position?" Arish said.
"Don't worry. The target is close now. None of their fighters can scramble from a forward base in time to reach us." The captain spoke with confidence. No PAF aircraft would intercept him today, unless an extended-loiter F-16C happened by chance to be in the air nearby, in which case it would be his bad luck. The chance was effectively nil; intelligence had Pakistan down to six of those airframes.
At nine o'clock on the radar warning panel, surveillance-radar signals appeared intermittently. The captain led the flight lower still, until they were almost flush with the riverbank, finally slipping out from under the radar sweeps. Altitude on the HUD read 150 metres. He knew that the nearest base, Attock, might already have launched a few J-7Ps, but they could not close in time.
"Scorpion flight, twenty kilometres to target. Prepare for release."
"Scorpion copies. Engaging autopilot. Form up for attack."
By the original plan, the formation moved into a single trail. Pandit would shoot first. A favourable position: enemy fire would not have time to range on the lead aircraft, and one of his tasks was to clear those threats out for the others. He levelled the aircraft carefully, then bent his head over the television monitor on the right of the cockpit. At the far end of the horizon, an indistinct grey wall was beginning to take shape, like a dam. He took the magnification to 20×; still not very clear. He looked up to confirm against the artificial horizon on the HUD that the aircraft was still level.
"Range fifteen kilometres. Continue level deceleration." Makunda's voice on the radio. He had been quietly running the formation throughout.
The captain brought speed down to 450 kph. A dangerous moment. The MiG-27 had no Doppler radar and could not do automatic terrain-following. Its low-altitude flight rested on the radio altimeter and the aerodynamic configuration of the variable-sweep wing. 400 kph was the limit. Even at the minimum 75-degree sweep, low-level flight remained a delicate proposition.2
"Arish, you have to watch my six."
"Don't worry, Lead. No SAM site seen the whole way."
On the CRT display the great Mangla Dam was now exceptionally clear. Reportedly one of the world's ten largest. The reports were not exaggerated; this was not a target one could miss. The captain searched left and right and spotted an AAA position on top of the dam at one end. At 22× magnification, the gun position appeared without any crew. Two quad-barrel mountings inexplicably pointed north.
"AAA position spotted. I'll take it. Strike the dam as planned." the captain ordered. Number two was a kilometre back, the others further. He had to clear this threat first to give the trailing aircraft room. On the weapons-select panel he switched to the television-guided bomb's video feed. The CRT immediately showed the seeker's blurry view. He found the target in the 2× wide-field mode, then switched to the narrow field with the cross-hair. Even at 400 kph, missing was easy. The captain took no chances. He kept lifting his head to scan the surroundings. Number two was a kilometre behind watching for him, but on certain things one was better off keeping one's own eye in. He eased the throttle back; speed on the CRT settled at 380 kph. He pressed the laser ranging button. The pod's beam took the slant range first time. The target was almost inside the bomb's release envelope. In the seeker's view, several soldiers were now scrambling toward the gun. The barrels began turning slowly. Too late.
The TV-guided bomb's lock indicator began flashing. The captain stabbed the release. The aircraft jolted; the heavy bomb had left the rack. He pulled up east in a climb. The clumsy big bomb was actually superior to the laser-guided variety in this respect. It had a degree of fire-and-forget capability. Pandit could now break clean before the AAA had completed its 360° traverse.
1. Rhino Squadron (犀牛中队): A new IAF squadron designation introduced in this chapter, identified as Su-30MKI-equipped. Real Indian Air Force squadrons employing the Su-30MKI include No. 2 "Winged Arrows", No. 8 "Pursoots" and No. 24 "Hunting Hawks" among others, but no IAF squadron is canonically nicknamed "Rhino" for the Su-30 platform; treat the designation as an authorial fictionalisation in the spirit of the named PAF squadrons elsewhere in the novel. ↩
2. MiG-27 wing-sweep at 75°: The Mikoyan MiG-27 ("Flogger-D/J" in NATO designation) carried the variable-geometry wing inherited from the MiG-23 family, with sweep angles selectable at 16°, 45° and 72° (the chapter's "75°" is an approximation). At maximum sweep the aircraft is configured for high-speed low-level penetration but loses lift coefficient and becomes increasingly skittish at low airspeed. Pandit's 400 kph threshold is the practical floor for a stable run-in at full sweep; below it, control authority degrades and the radio altimeter becomes the only reliable indication of impending impact. ↩