A Tangled Picture
Through the first week of May, India put no tactical attack aircraft anywhere near Mangla Dam. Every aircraft seemed to be feeding the strike packages going north. Now and then a UAV scraped along the border, deliberately or otherwise grazing the area. The Indian behaviour was as if the target had been altogether abandoned, perhaps the international outcry had spooked them. Sami knew the appearance was false. India simply lacked the capability to control a large strike package on demand. They had to be preparing something. Whenever an Indian UAV came in close, Sami insisted Islam not switch on the local SAM search radars for the sake of a distant drone: the range was too long for a kill, and once the radar's location and signature were measured, the trap would be compromised.
Five battalions of FD-2000 SAMs, the most plausible weapon Pakistan had for downing a Su-30, were quietly disposed in an arc 100 kilometres west of Kharian.1 All search radars were under strict emissions control. Islam pulled a dozen tracked 37-millimetre self-propelled AAA pieces2 off the army and seeded them through the surrounding hills as supplementary low-altitude fire. Each carried its own search-and-ranging radar and an older optical track, which let the gun stand on its own and were difficult to jam. With everything in place, Islam's only remaining worry was that the Indian Air Force would not come.
The day the Indian Air Force chose to commit was overcast and drizzling. Every ground radar north of Gujrat was being heavily jammed by a stand-off electronic-warfare aircraft 50 kilometres on the Indian side of the border. The aircraft kept flying back and forth along the border. Endurance was clearly substantial. Pakistani-side surveillance of the airfields at Halwara and Adampur went completely blind: not a single Indian aircraft taking off or landing could be seen. The jammer had not yet pushed further west, and Lahore's long-range warning radar still had eyes on the airspace inside the country, but the Jhelum river basin was outside its arc. The Indians had picked a poor day for it: the rain seemed to be pulling the jammer's effective output down.
Sami had the news of the jamming the moment it began. He could not see whether the bombers had launched yet, but the picture was unmistakable. He immediately had the standby AWACS at Peshawar lift off to watch the eastern sector (per his earlier deal with Islam, the major general was personally aboard).3 By the time the AWACS was over Faisalabad, a vectoring officer could already see a large body of Indian fighters crossing the border for the dam. He counted them. A full twenty bandits at 5,000 metres pushing west toward the dam. Behind, off Adampur, nine MiG-29s plus a single electronic-warfare aircraft were closing on the border. He had never seen a strike package this large.4
The eight Thunders of Sami's No. 26 Squadron lifted off from two airfields and pushed east. By the time they were in formation, the data link clearly showed the bombers already overhead the dam. There would be no stopping the release. The only question now was whether Sami's plan could put a few of them on the ground.
"Lions, or Rhinos?" Islam asked over the VHF.
"Only out of Halwara could they be this fast. It has to be the Lions." Sami answered.
"Group Captain. Latest: the dam has taken the first wave. Still standing."
"Good. There won't be a second wave today. Half of those aircraft are not carrying bombs."
"Which means their air-to-air load will be heavy. Watch yourself." Islam said.
"I know. I expect they have us by now. Let's see how they react."
As Sami had reckoned, the A-50 AWACS 500 kilometres away had spotted several Pakistani aircraft attempting to pinch the Su-30 group from the rear. The AWACS passed the picture at once to the Lions in the air and to Air Chief Marshal Bifrata at his command post in Jaipur. From Bifrata's perspective, the riposte was entirely as expected. He gave a thin smile. The Pakistanis were moths to a flame; the counterstroke had been laid in.
"Torch flight (the new electronic-warfare detachment, in fact a single aircraft), close on the Lions. Do not cross the border." Bifrata said, going over the AWACS's head with a number of direct instructions on the riposte. With the EW aircraft up to suppress ground radars, Pakistani ground fires would not be able to play any tricks.
"Fortress, this is Command. As planned, the Lions will counter-attack. I am looking forward to seeing them surpass the Eagles' record of the past two weeks."5
The ten Su-30s that had finished their bomb run turned for home as planned. The MiG-29 escort, low on fuel, also broke back for Adampur (why had they launched at all?). The other ten Su-30MKIs of the air-to-air escort began to turn and search for the enemy.
Two full weeks of air strikes had now passed. Indian intelligence reckoned that 60 per cent of Pakistani forward airfields and half of the ground radars east of Peshawar were unusable. The figure was a touch high, but not so high as to dent Bifrata's confidence in committing audacious tasking over north-eastern Pakistan.
The Lions' Su-30MKIs, having turned, came onto a head-on course with the Thunders at a separation of roughly 95 kilometres. Almost every Indian aircraft now had its radar on, sweeping in a high-PRF mode, adjusting altitude and pitch under AWACS direction in an effort to scan the distant targets to a fix.
"These idiots are doing the same thing. Every last one of them." Sami said, watching the EW display. From the radar-beam signatures aggregated on his cockpit display, the Indians had him and were trying for multi-target tracking. A quite impractical mode in this context: a real veteran would shed the track easily. The Lions appeared to fight from doctrine. In real-world experience, the Eagles were considerably more seasoned. Sami also had to admit that, sometimes, the fool's stick really was longer; better not to underestimate him.
"All right, lads. Whether your training pays off depends on now."
The Thunders kept boring straight at the bandits. He had to hold until 80 per cent of the head-on R-77 envelope before turning. After all his years as a fighter pilot, he understood the pilot's mind: at that range, the temptation was irresistible.
In the distant Indian AWACS, the controller was now suggesting the Lions move to one-on-one tracking and stop the meaningless multi-target sweep. They still held a 10-to-8 numerical advantage and had no need to double up on a single target.
1. Five battalions of FD-2000: A reflection of the export-version HQ-9's organic structure, in which a single regiment-grade SAM unit consists of multiple firing battalions, each with its own engagement radar and several launchers, networked back to a regimental search radar. Sami's plan, with the Chinese advisors' help, scatters the firing battalions across the arc and keeps the search radars dark until the moment of engagement. The advisor's role becomes explicit in Chapter 63. ↩
2. 37-millimetre self-propelled AAA: The description (tracked chassis, integral search-and-ranging radar, optical backup) matches the Chinese Type 95 SPAAA in essentials. A short-range gun system with self-contained sensors fits the brief for an unjammable supplementary fire net dispersed through the hills. ↩
3. Islam aboard the AWACS: The condition Sami extracted in Chapter 60. Sami's prediction that India would commit a stand-off jammer to suppress ground communications has come good in the chapter's first paragraph. The major general, in any underground command post, would now be deaf. ↩
4. Why had the MiG-29 escort launched?: A bracketed authorial aside. The MiG-29Bs, drawn from the No. 223 Trident Squadron and No. 31 Lions, were committed as nominal escort but were short of fuel for any real engagement and turned back as soon as the bombers cleared the border. The author flags the irrationality of the tasking. The escort's purpose may have been more political than military: a flight count to reassure the Indian Air Staff. ↩
5. "Surpass the Eagles' record": A reference to Goyal's flight from No. 31 Lion Squadron's sister Su-30MKI unit (the Eagles), and in particular the Siachen ambush that downed two F-16Cs in Chapters 37–38. Bifrata's expectation that the Lions, more cautious and equally well equipped, will eclipse the Eagles will turn out to be exactly wrong, in a way the Air Chief Marshal had not anticipated. ↩