The Duel
The Indian AWACS had now seen the hidden threat. The controller began advising the Lions to react at once.
At his command post, the Air Chief Marshal had taken a sudden hit to his confidence. He was beginning to worry which way this might go. Only the EW aircraft pushed forward in time could suppress this kind of radar; alternatively, he could turn the package back, but that he was unwilling to do, and there was likely no time for it either.
Within roughly twenty seconds, the AWACS over Sahil detected five new target-illumination radars.1 The number, and the way they had appeared, did not look accidental: it approached an SAM brigade-level formation. The picture was very ominous. The AWACS could not yet tell what state these radars were in.
"Fortress to Flying Snake (callsign of the EW aircraft, currently in the agreed silent window for the CSS communications jammer): Torch flight has a brigade-level SAM threat in their vicinity. Multiple emitters. Stand by to monitor." said the AWACS.
"Snake copies. Storing and analysing signatures now. Ready to commit to counter shortly." answered the back-seat operator on the Snake.
The aircraft was, in theory, capable of crude analysis of ground-radar signals followed by targeted deception jamming. But the Israeli technicians had not told the Indian Air Force everything. Designing a complete new EW platform on an existing fighter airframe takes a conservative two years, not two weeks; even the Su-30MKI, with its very generous payload and endurance, could not become a competent EW platform on a sprint timeline. The current aircraft might approach the power output of a Growler with the AN/ALQ-99 pod,2 but in every other capability it was nowhere near American EW kit.
In practice, this hastily assembled aircraft was better suited to plain barrage jamming. It carried three large self-powered jamming pods on take-off, essentially scaled-up versions of conventional jamming pods. For full-band jamming, or for using the low-band and high-band pods to suppress search and target-illumination radars separately, the aircraft was usable. But noise suppression of that kind required getting close to the ground emitter. Electronic deception was the platform's weak point. The aircraft had no long-baseline interferometer fitted (which would have spoiled the original aerodynamic profile, and there had been no time anyway), so its real-time ability to gather direction-of-arrival, modulation and similar parameters from an enemy radar emission, and analyse them, was poor. Faced with the HQ-9-derived system 150 kilometres away, with its rapidly varying pulse signatures, it had nothing useful to offer in the moment.3
It dawned on Air Chief Marshal Bifrata that, in the short term, he was reduced to the Torch flight's onboard jamming gear and to hard-kill measures.
Lieutenant Kushan's Su-30 charged the rough bearing of the target radar. The acceleration was a precondition for releasing the comparatively large Russian ARM. The pilot knew the radar he was after had to be close to the SAM unit's command post; the illumination radars dotted around it were deliberately scattered, but the search radar was the soul of the system. Suppress the rotating search set and most of the unit's combat capacity went with it.
"Torch flight, prepare to release chaff." Sahili called over the radio. He still had the formation in hand. He knew that a steep descent was the most reliable way out of the SAM threat envelope, but he could not yet bring himself to order it. The pursuit was still in progress, and as deputy squadron leader of the unit with the best exercise record in the Indian Air Force, he had to wait on the AWACS or the command post.
"Torch flight, you may break off pursuit and lose altitude to evade the threat." said the controller in the AWACS.
"No. Hold altitude." A second later, the Air Chief Marshal at the command post overruled the recommendation. He had his reasons for that call. But, unlike his Pakistani counterpart, he had not put himself aboard an AWACS for this engagement. A cardinal mistake.4
Ten long seconds passed. The supersonic anti-radiation missile under the Su-30 still could not capture the target's signature or record a position. The other side appeared to be using a very particular radar regime (No. 31 Lions' entire combat experience came from exercises). The detection-pulse repetition cycle on the ground emitter kept varying, and the missile's seeker could not catch the signature (the EW aircraft 130 kilometres back was struggling with the same problem). It was the duellist's nightmare of finding the pistol jammed at the moment of fire. The two Indian aircrew in the cockpit grew very anxious indeed.
In the surrounding mountains of Jegwala,5 the ground radar kept refreshing the data on the Indian aircraft. Ten days earlier, the Indian Mirage 2000s that had broken through the Pakistani defensive line had vanished from this same radar screen in this same area. That was not going to happen today. A Chinese engineer in blue overalls and a headset stood calmly in the FD-2000 brigade command vehicle, watching the screen. One hand pressed firmly down on the shoulder of a young Pakistani sergeant operator, restraining the man's impulse to push the firing button. The bandits had been inside the engagement envelope for over ten seconds. But the Chinese advisor saw, on the screen, a developing tendency in the Indian formation toward disarray, and he had to wait patiently for the tendency to mature. Firing too early might prompt the highly manoeuvrable aircraft to descend abruptly and slip out the edge of the engagement envelope. A few more seconds.6
Every fire-control radar held its target steadily. The supposedly fearsome EW aircraft had still not produced an effective counter. The ground command picked up a degree of confidence. By the computer analysis, the most threatening of the bandits was now well clear of the formation, charging toward the command post, and from its acceleration profile most likely setting up the launch of an anti-radiation missile.
"Target altitude 4,500. Slant range 19. Two ready."
"Fire."
Two trails of flame rose vertically out of a carefully camouflaged depression in the ground, made minor course corrections, and turned due east. This was not a normal SAM engagement. This launch carried Major General Islam's wish: he urgently needed a victory to break a myth of the Indian Air Force, a myth two weeks in the making whose curtain was overdue.
Lieutenant Kushan's RWR had been screaming for ten and more seconds. He had held off, with great force of will, the urge to break and run, gritting his teeth and waiting for his Kh-58 to lock the target.7 What he heard finally was not the missile-acquisition tone but the AWACS warning him to evade an inbound SAM. He had to abandon the targeting and go to evade.
The huge aircraft howled into a tight descending turn, kicking out ten chaff bundles in succession. The lieutenant had done all the right things. Whether he got away was another matter, decided by luck.
The two missiles down low and the data link with the ground command vehicle were unaffected by the short-band jammer. The jammer was too far off, and the rain made the picture worse for it.
The Indian fighter was descending hard to break the lock. The fire-control radar on the ridge was holding it. The chaff achieved a degree of disturbance: the aircraft's return drowned in the larger RCS chaff cloud. The first missile missed and detonated prematurely amid the chaff. The new fire-control system did not make the same mistake twice. The operator promptly used the small spectral difference between aircraft and chaff to subtract the chaff and guided the second missile cleanly through the false return, on toward Lieutenant Kushan's Su-30.
1. "Sahil": The Chinese 萨希尔 here, instead of 萨希利 used elsewhere in this chapter pair, is the same character, the deputy squadron leader leading the Su-30 escort. Treat as authorial slip; the rendered name in English remains Sahili throughout. ↩
2. AN/ALQ-99 and the EA-18G Growler: The AN/ALQ-99 is the long-serving United States Navy electronic-warfare jamming pod system, fitted in various forms to the EA-6B Prowler and the EA-18G Growler. The pod is self-powered (each unit incorporates a ram-air turbine) which is why the novel's converted Su-30 carries "self-powered" pods of similar physical scale. Power-wise the comparison Bifrata's people have been sold is plausible; what they cannot match in the timeframe is the integrated emitter library and the long-baseline interferometer geometry that lets a real Prowler/Growler do directed deception rather than just barrage noise. ↩
3. HQ-9 (红旗9): The Chinese surface-to-air missile system whose export designation is the FD-2000 introduced in Chapter 59. The author switches names mid-arc; the system referenced here is the same brigade. The HQ-9's pulse-Doppler engagement radar uses frequency agility and varying pulse-repetition intervals as anti-jam features; an EW platform without a deep emitter library cannot strip the modulation in time to drive useful deception. ↩
4. Ground-based command versus airborne command: The mistake Sami forced Islam to avoid in Chapter 60, by extracting the promise that Islam would fly his command post in an AWACS. Bifrata, who could have done the same from Jaipur but did not, is now overriding the AWACS controller's tactically correct call ("descend to evade") with a stand-fast order from the ground, on the basis of an incomplete picture. The novel's argument across the engagement is geometrical: command post latency plus jamming uncertainty is, in this kind of trap, fatal. ↩
5. Jegwala (杰格瓦拉): A Pakistani village in the foothills west of Kharian, named here as the location of the FD-2000 brigade command. Specific referent uncertain; the area west of Kharian and Jhelum on the Pakistani Punjab–Azad Kashmir boundary is mountainous and contains a number of small villages with similar-sounding Punjabi names. The phonetic rendering above is the closest direct approximation. ↩
6. The Chinese advisor: The novel's first on-stage appearance of a Chinese FD-2000 advisor in Pakistan, working alongside a Pakistani sergeant operator on the firing key. The detail of the hand on the operator's shoulder is the chapter's quietest political moment. The advisor's restraint, holding fire after the engagement window has opened, in order to wait for an Indian formation breakdown the operator cannot yet see, is precisely the kind of competence asymmetry the novel has been building toward through Lin Huaisheng's analyst arc. ↩
7. Kh-58 (NATO: AS-11 Kilter): A Russian supersonic anti-radiation missile typically carried by the Su-30MKI and earlier MiG-25BM/Su-17M family. The seeker is broadband passive and requires the target emitter's signature to be captured cleanly during the brief pre-launch acquisition window. Frequency-agile and pulse-jittered radars are specifically designed to defeat this acquisition; Kushan's failure to lock is the missile's design weakness encountering its design counter. ↩