Air-Vice-Marshal Malhotra looked up from the papers he was reviewing inside the glass-walled conference room. He didn’t hear the Group-Captain as the glass was sound-proofed, but he did see the sudden loss in video feed. He opened the glass door of the room and the low-volume conversations between the operators reached his ears.
“What happened?” he asked the Group-Captain.
“Not sure, sir,” the officer replied. “We just lost RISAT-2 feed over 823RD Brigade A-O.”
“Checked with ground-control?” Malhotra asked as he watched the wall-screen static replaced with a 2D map projection of the globe with orbits of various Indian and Chinese satellites marked over it.
“Doing that now,” the Group-Captain said as he picked up the phone near where he was standing.
Malhotra knew what this was even as he waited for confirmation.
When the war had started two weeks ago, one of the major questions in the minds of the operators at the Indian Aerospace Command in Bangalore was the threat posed to Indian satellites by Chinese Anti-Satellite or ASAT weapons. These KT-xx series missiles were modified older-model DF-21 ballistic-missiles designed to hit satellites directly, referred to as kinetic-strike. But Chinese ASAT capabilities were as enigmatic as they were doubtful. A lot of their research and development into this genre of weapons was based around American and Soviet technologies. But even so, they still did not have the true ASAT capabilities. The KT-xx systems required very accurate information of the target satellite’s orbit and flyover schedules. As such, if the enemy kept changing these regularly and erratically, there was little that these weapons could do to intercept them successfully.
But on the Indian side, satellite coverage over mainland China and Tibet was essential for wartime operations and intelligence gathering on Chinese intentions. They had to be used.
The few Indian civilian satellites that had remote-sensing capabilities had been loaned from ISRO to the Aerospace Command. The latter currently operated only the RISAT-2 radar-imaging-satellite and had partial control over RISAT-1 along with ISRO when the war had started. Since then, ISRO had loaned its CARTOSAT series satellites to expand operational capabilities.
During the last two weeks, these satellites had been orbiting continually over mainland China and were always under threat of ASAT attacks. But a stroke of luck had benefitted the Indian side which Malhotra had understood very early on. Because there were few satellites on hand and far larger areas to cover in Tibet, China, the Himalayan mountains and the Indian Ocean, satellite tasking varied hour-to-hour, day-to-day. And so orbits shifted daily to accommodate these missions. And that had denied the Chinese ASAT systems the orbit stability they needed.
Of course, that had changed as the momentum of conventional war had changed hands from China to India and the threat of nuclear-tipped ballistic-missiles increased. Now the focus of these satellites and the Aerospace Command had reduced to smaller and smaller regions around the 2ND Artillery Corps units deployed in northern Tibet.
And that had made their RISAT orbits predictable and regular…
Malhotra crossed his arms and turned to see the Group-Captain as he put down the phone with the ISRO satellite-operations center.
“They took it out, didn’t they?” he asked.
“Sounds like it, sir. Looks like we just got the first wartime demonstration of Chinese ASAT capabilities!”
“Better tell the chaps at the SFC that we just lost our coverage over the Chinese DF-21s in northern Tibet until we can re-task RISAT-1 from the Lhasa front.” Malhotra ordered and the Group-Captain nodded and picked up the phone again.
Of course, that means that we won’t have continuous coverage on the PLA 15TH Corps in southern Tibet… Malhotra realized.
There just weren’t enough Indian military satellites to go around. And it was no more apparent today than ever before. The loss of even one satellite was enough to tear a big hole within the Indian coverage of the Chinese ballistic-missile sites in northern Tibet…
For all the chaos it created in Bangalore, the loss of the radar-imaging satellite did not cripple Indian coverage over the Chinese ballistic-missile sites as much as General Liu and his officers had anticipated.
The loss of battlefield control by the PLAAF had a lot of far-reaching cascading effects, some of which were lost on the Chinese due to careful Indian planning. And so while the ASAT attack had shocked the Indian Aerospace Command and crippled a section of their capability, it did not affect the Indian SFC as it might have done if the PLAAF still had control over the Tibetan skies…
For the past few days the long-range, long-endurance Herons of the IAF had been flying lonely, isolated missions over central Tibet in support of the SFC. They were filling coverage gaps and helping maintain a minimal level visual contact on the enemy.
When the RISAT-2 satellite was smashed in orbit above the 823RD Brigade launchers, the loss in video-feed at the SFC had been partial, unlike in Bangalore. The nearest Heron had been diverted on orders from Air-Marshal Iyer and had arrived on station, far-south of the battery and outside the range of its medium-range SAMs in order to maintain long, oblique visual angles for its EO systems. That way, it stayed out of harm’s way while still able to monitor activities at the southernmost battery of the Brigade. The Chinese had no knowledge of this bird and so when they began rolling out the DF-21C launchers from their camouflaged locations for pre-launch preparations, they had no intelligence that Iyer and his staff at the SFC had a clear view of the Chinese intentions…
“Oh my god! Are you serious?” the Prime-Minister’s voice came over the conference view on the wall.
“I wish I wasn’t!” Iyer replied urgently. “It’s clear as day, sir! We can see them preparing the launchers. The nettings are gone and the vehicles are preparing to move to their launch positions!”
“What targets are we expecting them to aim for?” Chakri asked as he joined the conversation. “I mean, we are talking about their DF-21s, right?”
“We are.” Iyer agreed. “The ‘C’ models to be exact. From where they are between Korla and Golmud, they can hit any target within an arc of fifteen-hundred kilometers. To give you an idea, we are talking about all states from Ladakh, down to Delhi, Uttar-Pradesh, Bihar, Sikkim, Assam and most other eastern states. But we don’t see any activity at their DF-31 sites. The 31s are what they would need in order to hit our southern cities such as Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and so on.”
“So it’s possible they are going for a battlefield use at this time? Not our cities?” the PM asked, his voice cracking under the fear.
“It is possible,” Iyer said. “But they can hit Delhi, as I mentioned earlier!”
“Iyer, are we talking nuclear warheads here?” Chakri asked. “I want to be clear on this!” Just then the NSA and other military officials joined the video feed and the screen split into smaller sections to accommodate them.
“Yes sir,” Iyer continued as Vice-Admiral Valhotra coordinated with the other officers in the operations center. “We are almost certain that their DF-21Cs are nuclear-tipped. Their short-range missiles are not. Many of these units were hit and destroyed on the ground by our air-force strikes once we established control of the skies over southern Tibet. Beijing pulled the surviving launchers to the north where we can’t touch them. But it also means that unless we start driving deep into Tibet, those shorter-range missiles are not our primary concern at this point. The DF-21s, however, are very much the weapon of choice for Beijing right now.”