An Uncanny Attack
"Abbas. They've already spotted us. That lead aircraft is a crafty one," Sami said over the radio. Four kilometres off, he had seen a small change in the MiG-27's wings; this middle setting was exactly the wing position best suited to that aircraft for a fight at medium speed. Because the flight controls of this old aircraft were nothing special, unable, like the American F-14, to have a computer set the sweep at will to the best position at every moment, before a fight a pilot would fix the wings in the middle position, a compromise reconciling speed and manoeuvrability.
"Group Captain. I see no sign of them accelerating? And no violent movement either," Abbas said, astonished; he had no idea how the group captain could tell. By his own common sense, once the enemy saw a pursuing aircraft he would have only two reactions, either accelerate away at once or wrench round with all his might to give battle; there would never be so lukewarm a reaction as this.
"That's why I say he's crafty. Watch his turn; he's veered off the Adampur bearing, which is most unusual. He's flying toward the col. And he's quietly dropped height as well."
"So that's it? There must be something hidden at the pass. Do we keep chasing?"
"Of course; only we must watch the radio scan all around at every moment."
"Black Spider leader, this is Viper. Enemy jamming aircraft airborne to the southwest; they've jammed our ultra-high-frequency datalink, and it is now paralysed. My aircraft retains only very-high-frequency narrowband communication, so I can give voice guidance only," the Saab 2000 responsible for this area reported suddenly.1
Sami looked down and found the datalink data on his display had indeed vanished; the text flickering on the integrated display showed the receiving end's error rate too high to get any useful data. This must have happened in the space of a dozen-odd seconds.
Why could they jam a frequency-hopping, encrypted UHF datalink? This had never happened before; had their technology been upgraded overnight? So Sami thought; but it did not affect his attack, for the enemy was long since within visual range.
"Viper, has your radar picked up any jamming?" Sami asked.
"Detection range has shortened a little, no great problem for now," the AWACS answered. Given the difference in power, to suppress the AWACS's phased-array radar completely was still beyond that mysterious Indian aircraft. But only a few days ago India's standoff jamming had still been ordinary multi-band barrage suppression; why, in a few short days, could they run such targeted deception jamming? For now no one knew. Pakistan had poured many years of effort into this datalink of its own; on the face of it flawless, it had never been thought open to jamming from a source more than a hundred kilometres off.
"Viper, how are things around the battlefield?"
"Black Spider leader, the two MiG-29s to the southwest are turning this way, a hundred and five kilometres, ninety-five degrees to your right."
"Viper, any ground radar come on the air?"
"Nothing so far; but given the complex electromagnetic environment at present, I cannot guarantee it."
Sami thought for a second, and decided to keep up the pursuit. He knew this fight might take place east of the Indian border, where it was hardly likely there would be no ground air-defence fire. But he could not bring himself to let these two enemy aircraft, so close at hand, go.
"Abbas, take the No. 4 aircraft south, switch on your radar and search, and try to block the MiG-29s. You can loop around to an advantageous position off their flank and rear, and force them to turn; better not to give battle. The Trident MiG-29s are not to be trifled with."
"Understood."
"Watch for their medium-range missiles, don't rush to the death; Hamid's flight will be here soon. You can use numbers to press them down." Sami reminded his subordinate only to drive the enemy off; he did not know the enemy had no medium-range missiles at all.
Everything arranged, Sami lit afterburner with his remaining wingman and chased at full speed after the two MiG-27UPGs flying toward the border pass. But the group captain dared not grow careless either; all the while he watched for suspicious radio-pulse scans around him. Today he carried a Chinese-made anti-radiation missile, a weapon never yet tried in combat, though of far greater range than the MAR-1.2 That was part of the confidence behind his daring to charge straight for the Indian border.
"Rehman, stay behind me on cover, drop your height a little; I want you to keep a special watch for smoke or muzzle flash on the ground. Don't let those SA-7s slip up on us."
"Understood, Wing Commander."
The two Thunders accelerated, cutting inside the turn radius of the enemy aircraft ahead to enter a lead pursuit, and switched on their radars to sweep the enemy, waiting for the enemy to blunder into the radar's aperture on their own.
The two MiG-27s ahead made no attempt to shake off the chase, only kept dropping height, as if desperate to reach the pass. Sami at once completed a track on the trailing wingman. He switched on the seeker power of his infrared-guided missile, making his final firing preparations. But at the same moment his RWS system began to warn; the JF-17 had a very sensitive radar-warning system, able to analyse the source and nature of a scanning signal.
Sure enough, a low-altitude search radar was hidden over at the col. Keeping his aim on the stiff-moving enemy aircraft, the group captain glanced down to scan his multifunction display, an SA-6? He saw, ahead in the one o'clock, another illuminating radar pointing at him; the situation seemed dire in the extreme, and judging the site not very far off, he might already have blundered into the missile's engagement envelope. Now the group captain had to make a decision at once: if he began the anti-radiation missile's launch sequence, then the two air-to-air missiles, power already on but cooling not yet complete, would become dead rounds.
The group captain decided that in for a penny, in for a pound; without the least dither, he squeezed the trigger at once. The two missiles flew straight ahead; because they were not sufficiently cooled, he did not expect them to hit the target, but it was better than breaking off an irreversible launch sequence by force and carrying faulty missiles home.
In the cockpit of the MiG-27 four kilometres ahead, Flying Officer Sachi had long been frightened out of his wits by the piercing lock-on warning; this was the second grave threat he had faced today, and he knew the situation was surely far worse than the earlier Stinger chase. He kept craning round to watch, waiting for the enemy's raised cudgel to fall. The flying officer could not at all understand what Flight Lieutenant Pandit meant by refusing to accelerate away; was it because he himself trailed at the rear of the formation, and could shield the leader from the missiles? So the flying officer imagined wildly. He believed neither that the far-off Tridents would come to save him, nor that the surface-to-air missile site ahead could do any good.
At last the flying officer saw a white flash beneath the enemy aircraft's wing behind him, and then two dazzling points of light flew slowly toward him. This frightened him badly. He knew this time there was no escaping his doom.
"Leader, the enemy has fired on me, request permission to eject."
"Fool, they fired too early..."
Before Flight Lieutenant Pandit could finish, he saw fire spurt from the canopy of the MiG-27 off his flank and rear, and then the canopy blew upward. Then Sachi and his seat together shot out of the cockpit.3
Pandit was struck dumb; he stared, stupefied, as Sachi's parachute opened in the air, while at the same moment the two missiles the enemy had fired struck the cliff face. And that poor fighter, all by itself, flew on to the east.
1. "Viper" and the datalink jamming: Viper is the callsign of the Saab 2000 covering this sector. The alarming development is that an Indian standoff jammer, from more than a hundred kilometres off, has defeated Pakistan's frequency-hopping encrypted UHF datalink with targeted deception jamming, a leap from the crude barrage jamming of days before. This points to the newly worked-up Israeli-Indian electronic-warfare aircraft (the "Torch" / "Flying Snake" conversion, C63N2) coming into its own. ↩
2. Sami's Chinese anti-radiation missile: Sami carries a Chinese ARM, untested in combat but of markedly longer range than the Brazilian MAR-1 the PAF has used before (the source's "mER-1" is the MAR-1). The type is unnamed; it is the reach of this new weapon that gives him the confidence to press over the border toward a defended pass. ↩
3. Sachi's rank: The source calls him 上尉 (flight lieutenant) at the moment of ejection, but Sachi is a flying officer throughout, and Flying Officer is kept here. The dark comedy of the close is intact either way: Sami's uncooled missiles miss and hit the cliff, yet Sachi, panicking, ejects anyway, leaving his undamaged MiG-27 to fly on pilotless. ↩