The Hidden Threat
"Leader, another big turnout today?"
"That's right, at least two Su-30 squadrons will bomb alongside us. Look, even those arrogant fellows up top have to hang ordinary aviation bombs now." Seeing the Hawks with bombs slung under them eased the flight lieutenant a little. "Listen, get ready to cross the border. Check every system; you'll want to keep your wits about you and look back a few more times. You know our aircraft aren't like those fashionable new toys; there's never a moment to be careless." Warning the others, Pandit at the same time checked his weapon safeties and warning gear. He knew the MiG-27's backward warning receiver had large blind zones; if an enemy radar lit him from below and behind (the direction a SAM radar favours), or scanned from above and to the side and rear (the direction a fighter's fire-control radar favours), this old Sirena set very likely would not react at all.1 He had learned that lesson long since, so he had to remind the lads not to be caught out.
"Look, I see the Rhino Su-30s, two o'clock," a pilot said.
Pandit glanced down at the clock on his panel. This was not the hour the Rhinos should appear, and in fact the Rhinos and the Lions were always of a kind, seldom approaching or crossing the border; to this day the flight lieutenant had never seen a single Rhino. They always hid still further off than he did, flying cover.
"Two o'clock?" The flight lieutenant fixed his eyes and looked hard. After a moment he too made out a few pale outlines in the sky.
"Fool, those are the Tridents' MiG-29Bs.2 If you can't recognise our own aircraft, I'd guess you can't recognise the enemy's either. From now on, not every twin-tailed aircraft is one of ours;3 you can't repeat the mistake I made, so keep your eyes peeled."
"Understood."
Given that the Scorpions' aircraft lacked a datalink, and that their various sensors were in a fairly backward state, in truth these aircraft, once airborne, were often flying blind; Pandit's line about bolting at the first stir of trouble had a real meaning to it.
"One more thing I want to remind you of: if an emergency comes up, don't turn back for base, that keeps you in enemy territory too long. You can land nearby at Adampur, the way I did last time."
"Are those MiG-29s at Adampur reliable?"
"Better than the Rhino Squadron, I'd say; the Trident pilots have fought a few real hard fights against enemy aircraft."
"Let's hope they don't run off and leave us."
Low to the southeast, Flight Lieutenant Rawal was leading a five-ship west. Adampur was nearest the bombing area, and his flight flew almost straight for it; the only tactical thought behind such a route was range. As ordered, for this attack Rawal's MiG-29s too carried close to a tonne of aviation bombs. Within the Indian air force, doubt about this fighter's air-combat ability was mounting by the day; because of the technical limits on its long-range air-to-air capability, the Air Staff now leaned toward using this air-superiority fighter as a multirole fighter-bomber. Every Trident pilot held this to be a great mistake, one that pushed the short-legged MiG-29B, in the three-way compromise of attack, defence, and range, into the worst of choices, cramping both its agility and its reach. But for the moment the air-force leadership held that the Su-30MKI could hold its own in the air single-handed, and that the more backward Trident squadron must convert and take up ground attack.
"Tell me your fuel states," Rawal asked. The Trident squadron's aircraft varied in how far their outer airframes had aged, and their internal equipment was not all at the same stage of upgrade, right down to slight differences in the engines; on an attack mission with range this marginal, the flight lieutenant had to ask about it often, lest some aircraft find itself unable to make it home.
Sure enough, one aircraft's belly tank was nearly dry. This squadron seldom carried bombs and seldom flew low, so some error in the ground estimate of range was not to be helped; if they met enemy aircraft at the far end of the route, how much combat time would be left was truly in doubt. "What kind of business is this?" the flight lieutenant thought. Using a MiG-29 to bomb with unguided ordnance was a pointless thing; going by the bombing scores of past years, if the whole formation dropped by unguided level bombing from fifteen hundred metres and put one bomb on the dam, they could thank their stars. To give up carrying medium-range missiles for an attack of such effect was to put the cart before the horse. Still, today at least held one thing to gladden him: over the radio he heard Goyal's voice. Though the Hawks were now the most envied unit on the whole Punjab front, to fight shoulder to shoulder with Goyal still gladdened him.
"Trident calling Eagle, I have you in sight."
"Flight Lieutenant Rawal, glad to hear your voice," Goyal answered.
"Eagle, we have to cross the border and attack first, our fuel is low. You'll have to cover us."
"Eagle understood. I hear you ran into that Pakistani ace again, I mean the one in 101," Goyal turned the talk to what interested him.
"That's right, he nearly shot me down. But I've found this aircraft's weakness: you can go vertical, climb in full afterburner, and it's enough to drag that Thunder into exhaustion. Then, at the top of the loop, there'll be a chance to lay your sight on him. Don't get into a flat turning fight with him, and don't use the helmet sight for high off-boresight shots; those may work on others, but this fellow is cunning, it's hard to make them tell on him."
"Just as I said last time, a very strong frontline fighter," Goyal said. He knew Rawal's account was all correct; it matched the conclusion he had worked out himself. His own first bout of circling with that Thunder had left him with a vivid memory of what this far less powerful aircraft could do in the horizontal plane; from three hundred to eight hundred kilometres an hour, its turn was excellent. He and Rawal owed these lessons alike to their own setbacks; luckily, that time, Goyal had not been shot down, and now Goyal was sure he had come fully into his own, and could take another turn against it.
"Mm, so it is. But these frontline aircraft have a great weakness: lately they can hardly take off from any forward field at all," Rawal said. In truth that weakness was only relative to a heavy-fighter unit like the Hawks; for the short-legged Trident squadron, it was six of one and half a dozen of the other.
"Let's hope we run into this fellow. I'd guess he's a squadron commander, maybe a squadron leader."
"We? No, I want no part of running into that madman. I think the air-force intelligence people may have it a little wrong: these Thunders have never once flown a ground attack; every time they appear, they come to fight to the death."
The two flight leaders chatting away to themselves over the radio left the controllers on the ground and aboard the AWACS at a loss. They felt the pilots ought to keep their minds more firmly on the job while crossing the border; but seeing that both these men were star pilots who had been on television, no one deliberately cut them off.
1. The Sirena and its blind zones (塞琳娜): The SPO-series Sirena radar-warning receiver fitted to the MiG-23/27 family. It is an old set with poor coverage below and behind the aircraft and off the upper sides and rear, which is precisely where a SAM's guidance radar or a fighter's fire-control radar tends to illuminate from. This is why Pandit trusts his own eyes over the warning gear, and why the Scorpions bolt at the first hint of trouble. ↩
2. MiG-29B as fighter-bomber: The Trident squadron's MiG-29Bs remain at the older B standard, their upgrade stalled (C45N1). The Air Staff's decision to load this short-legged air-superiority fighter with iron bombs, sacrificing its medium-range missiles for a role it does poorly, is the doctrinal grievance running through Rawal's thread; the airframe ends up compromised in agility, defence, and range all at once. ↩
3. "Not every twin-tailed aircraft is one of ours": The Su-30MKI, MiG-29, and the PAF's new J-11 are all twin-finned, and at distance the pale planforms blur together. Pandit's warning points back to the recognition problem the J-11's arrival created (C55N3); mistaking a Flanker-family aircraft for a friendly is exactly the error that has cost lives on this front. ↩