Cold Start
"Self-propelled howitzers and tanks: you've struck them all out?"
"Right. I am offering an advisory opinion. The most urgent items, in my reading, are anti-tank missiles and air defence weapons. Not these expensive ones."
"A 120-millimetre self-propelled anti-tank gun?" Captain Ding was startled. He had spotted a very particular item on the list. Apart from the Chinese armed forces, few militaries developed or fielded a pure dedicated anti-tank weapon of this kind. The item was not on Pakistan's request list either; Lin had added it on his own initiative.
"Strengthening the artillery's anti-tank capability is the most pressing requirement. This weapon will defeat every Indian main battle tank, has reasonable mobility, and… we can afford it." From the look of him, he did not intend to accept Pakistan's request in full. Or perhaps that was the line from above as well.
"You mean: there are reservations upstairs about the aid?"
"Yes. The senior people have to live within their means. The fighters this round are old airframes, engine and airframe life past the halfway mark. The missiles are stockpile R-77s and PL-8s.1 If we keep these missiles, the seeker-life extension would cost a small fortune. Better to do them the favour and let them shoot the lot off in short order. The Indian potshot, in any case, will tilt the limits of aid more in Pakistan's favour now."
"By the way, who exactly is this Sipanga, the new XXI Corps commander?2 The latest from the Pakistani side: he may take command of an entire theatre."
"You've come to the right man. I know something of him. As a young officer Sipanga studied armour theory in Britain and Russia. He came back and wrote prolifically. You will have heard of Cold Start; it is essentially his work. The doctrine represents the highest level of contemporary Indian Army operational thought."3
"Cold Start?" Captain Ding's blank look suggested he had not really heard of it. No surprise. Many officers at home, in their theoretical reading, kept their eyes on the Americans and paid little attention to what Indian soldiers were thinking. Lin, fortunately, had spent these past years quietly compiling Indian Army reform thinking.
"In short, Cold Start is a doctrine of pre-emption."
"Pre-emption? Militarily, or politically?"
"Both at once. Like blitzkrieg or deep-battle theory, the political aim is to land a decisive blow before the adversary completes his total-war preparations and before the international community converges on a sanctions consensus. The military aim leans on armoured shock action, with very strong emphasis on integrated air-ground cover."
"It sounds… frankly, like military adventurism."
"Which is why he has Singh's deep trust. I have always thought he was the man Singh wanted in Prasad's chair as Chief of Army Staff, but he himself is unlikely to want the post. He is a frontline commander."
"And that is why you are advising the self-propelled anti-tank gun for the Pakistanis?" Captain Ding said. The reading went straight to the heart. Lin was caught a little off-guard. Old Ding had been mostly asking questions until now, rarely volunteering his own conclusions.
"Indeed… that is so."
"I was guessing on common sense. The Type 89 self-propelled anti-tank gun was designed years ago to defeat Soviet armoured groups. A weapon that violates common-sense thinking. In fact, only Germany, in the late phase of the Second World War, mass-produced anything similar." Old Ding said.
"Which is no surprise. People who have not felt the threat of Soviet armoured groups will not design something that overturns the conventional defence-mobility-firepower trinity. You're right: a defensive weapon, against the grain. Outstanding in its way. If the Pakistan Army can grasp the present situation honestly, they will not entertain the fantasy of slugging it out with Indian tank divisions in the Punjab desert with their own armour."
"Will we have other counter-measures this time round?"
"I don't know. But I think there will be more than just a Foreign Ministry protest. Maybe at sea. We shall see."
South China Sea, somewhere; depth, 120 metres. A Chinese nuclear submarine was moving slowly. In the boat's command compartment, Captain Ma Lin stood behind the conning station, waiting for the reports from each space. Around him, men exchanged glances and waited for his next order.
"Engineering fire is spreading. Clutch room contained for the moment. From the second deck up, fore and aft compartments are now isolated by the fire."
"Reactor and steam generator status?" the captain asked, cool.
"Secondary loop is isolated. Steam pressure is falling. Coolant pumps are normal. Backup power is available on call."
"Radiation leakage?"
"Aft spaces medium gamma; forward spaces low; no neutron flux detected, indicating the moderator and control rods are still functioning." said the executive officer, seated alongside, watching a display.
"Damage control?"
"No flooding. Recommend emergency surface."
"No. We're in a war zone. Cannot surface. Come up to antenna depth instead." the captain said, looking around. He braced a hand against an overhead pipe. The boat began ascending at a steep angle.
"Continue fire reports."
"Engineering second deck partially controlled. Automatic fire suppression has activated." A voice from the intercom. The men in the command compartment showed visible relief.
"Casualties?"
"All under examination. Light injuries clustered in the passageway. Some serious burns require isolation. We're short-handed back here." somebody said over the intercom.
"Pinch the fire zone in. Move the wounded forward. I'll send help." Ma Lin scanned the compartment. His eye landed on the most idle man present: the executive officer, Sun Xiangdong.
"Sun Xiangdong, they need a hand with the wounded back there. Go. If necessary, get yourself wounded too. Let them dress it for you."
"On my way." The XO stood, walked unwillingly out of the command compartment, and headed aft.
"Heads up. The XO is on his way back. Ah… second-degree steam burns, head trauma. Bandage him up."
"Copy. Fire fully under control. No serious leak detected at the reactor. Secondary loop piping under rapid inspection. Estimate 30 per cent of full power back online in ten minutes."
Some in the command compartment broke into applause. Faces relaxed. Only Ma Lin remained set. He pulled a stopwatch from his pocket and looked at it. Fire-suppression time exceeded the average by some 35 seconds.
"I declare the exercise concluded. Performance: average." he said. Everyone laughed in relief. Some began murmuring among themselves. Ma Lin shook his head and walked over to the periscope.
"Captain. Cipher room has a fleet ELF signal."4 The intercom again.
"On my way."
He left the command compartment. The men playing wounded were still crowded in the passageway, joking. They had not taken the exercise quite seriously. Ma Lin worked his way through to the cipher room. He was in no hurry; ELF traffic was always slow. He sat down for some time before the signal had fully come in. The signal startled him. When he had left port, he had not anticipated a real war waiting. And in unfamiliar waters: the Indian Ocean.
1. R-77 and PL-8: The R-77 (NATO: AA-12 Adder) is the Russian medium-range active-radar missile already covered in the glossary. The PL-8 is a Chinese short-range infrared-guided air-to-air missile, a domestic licence-build derivative of the Israeli Python-3, fielded extensively across the PLAAF and PAF in the 1990s and 2000s. Lin's quiet point is that China is sending stockpile rounds whose seeker life would otherwise need expensive extension, an ungenerous-looking gift that is also genuinely useful to Pakistan in the short term. ↩
2. Sipanga's command: Captain Ding's question reflects how thin the picture from the Pakistani side is: he has Sipanga down as the new "XXI Corps commander", the post Sipanga has held since before the war started (see C49). The "may take command of a theatre" rumour is closer to what is actually happening, given the manoeuvring described in C48 and C49 over the Army Chief of Staff post. ↩
3. Cold Start: A real Indian Army doctrine, publicly identified after the 2001–02 standoff with Pakistan and refined through the 2000s. The doctrine, as outlined in Indian-language sources, calls for the rapid mobilisation of integrated battle groups for limited offensive thrusts into Pakistani territory before international actors can impose a ceasefire and before the Pakistan Army can fully mobilise; the political and operational compression Lin describes here is the doctrine's central premise. The novel attributes its formulation to Sipanga; in real life, no single author can be cleanly named, though General V.P. Malik and several successors at army headquarters were associated with the developmental work. ↩
4. ELF traffic (长波): The Chinese 长波 ("long wave") here covers the very-low-frequency and extremely-low-frequency communications used to reach submerged submarines. ELF transmissions are slow, narrow-bandwidth, and one-way: a fleet command station sends, the boat receives at antenna depth, and replying requires either coming shallow with a buoyant-wire antenna or surfacing. Ma Lin's comment that "ELF traffic is always slow" is operational reality, not weariness. ↩