In the central sector the losses were less severe. With barely twenty-five missiles targeted at the entire sector of the border stretching from Sikkim to Himachal Pradesh, damage reports were sporadic and few. Most of the missiles fell prey to the critically placed SAMs in the region. But a few of the forward airbases received a few hits. At Bareilly airbase the main runway was severely cratered while at Agra the main ATC building was decimated to the ground, also destroying a good portion of the tarmac nearby. The destruction of the ATC would cause hindrance to the handling of large traffic at the airbase in the days to come.
In New-Delhi the damage was again minimal. With a combination of a single long-range S-300 battery north of the city and two Akash Batteries for the city alone, the defensive fire to the few incoming Chinese missiles was disproportionality high. Only one of the Chinese missiles made it into the skies above the city where it slammed into the Air HQ building in a shattering explosion and fire visible throughout the city. The building had been evacuated before the attack, but the first visible sign of the war to the mainstream Indian public was that of the furiously burning HQ building of the air-force. It was not an auspicious start to the war for the Indians…
The last of the hits to be suffered was in Ladakh. Just like other sectors of the border, the attacks here were again mainly centered on a few of the critical airbases at Leh, Daulat-beg-oldi or DBO, Chushul and Thoise. But with large presence of Indian interceptors in the skies above, only a handful of missiles broke through the defenses. Leh was the only airbase to suffer damage to its tarmac areas and buildings under these leaked missiles…
Back in the skies above southern Uttar-Pradesh and on board the IAF Boeing-737 airborne command and control aircraft, Chakri read through the single page message he had received from General Yadav before removing his glasses and rubbing his eyes.
The realization finally sank in: India had been attacked.
He was no fool. Even as the people around him frantically tried to determine the scale of the losses, he knew exactly what had happened and understood that a long and bitter struggle now beckoned…
“Foxtrot-One, this is — Two, do you read? Over”
The signals officer waited for a reply but got static instead.
“Foxtrot-One, this is — Two, do you read? Does anybody read? Over”
And yet again there was nothing but static. The Captain looked back at Major Krishnan standing behind him.
“Still no reception, sir”
“Keep trying!”
Krishnan said before moving outside the improvised bunker carved out of the hillside. Everybody had been issued with warm protective gear to brave against the cold, but the chilling winds still made their way to the very bones. Krishnan lit up his cigarette and watched the smoke get blown into the fleeting snow whipped up by the winds. He contemplated his next move…
The last hour had been pure chaos. Both Brigades in the Walong region under the 2ND Mountain Division had lost contact with Divisional HQ. Additionally, Krishnan had lost contact with Colonel Malik and his HQ and had not been able to regain contact so far. They had received scattered eyewitness reports from various Jawans sitting in their observation posts to the north about low flying cruise-missiles flying overhead minutes before they had heard the distant rumbling thunder to the south and lost contact. Krishnan and his men feared the worst, but they could have hardly seen the whole picture…
Despite Colonel Malik’s statement about the emergency relocation of their attached air-force UAV squadron, they had lost all contact with that unit minutes after the missiles had struck. There was no way for Krishnan and his men to know that a large portion of men in that squadron now lay dead or wounded after having taken a direct hit on their small airbase to the south.
The problem was that the need for the UAV support was at its peak at the moment. Every Indian field commander wanted news of what was going on north of the border with the PLA, and there just weren’t enough assets to go around now…
To make matters worse, the loss in communications meant that not only was there no contact with anybody up the chain of command, there was also no hope of indirect support should they make contact with the Chinese. The local tube artillery batteries under the 2ND Mountain Division Artillery Brigade had taken a mauling at the hands of the Chinese missiles. And with the air-force also reeling from the attacks, the possibility of close air support was low, to say the least.
It was a bleak picture from Krishnan’s standpoint. But that was to be expected following such a heavy attack, and things would improve as the Indian military shifted into war mode at both the mental and physical levels, something which would take at least a day, if not more. So for the time being, local field commanders like Krishnan had to improvise…
“They are coming south all right. The question is when,” one of Krishnan’s company commanders said as he joined the Major. Krishnan offered the Captain one of his cigarettes, which the latter gladly accepted. He offered the younger man a light, shielded from the cold winds by his hand. A few puffs of smoke later, the Captain continued:
“And they are going to try and take as much advantage of this mess they have created on our side. Sir, what is our plan of action if we make contact with the Chinese before we re-establish contact with Battalion or Brigade HQ?”
Krishnan turned to head the northern Himalayan peaks and gestured to them with his fingers holding the cigarette:
“At the moment we are electronically blind, deaf and speechless. We have no support of any kind and cannot make contact with anybody else higher up on the chain of command. So what do we do? What are we supposed to do?”
Krishnan smiled.
“We stand and fight!”
“How are you getting on with our reply?” Yadav asked the Eastern Army commander over the radio.
“862 Missile Regiment is on point for this one. They are getting ready. We will hit them in the Lhasa region which is about the farthest we can go anyway. The plan is to decimate the PLA’s 13TH Group Army’s ability to get off their staging areas. We will have to wait and see how that turns out though,” Lieutenant-General Suman said from his new operations center near Kolkata.
He relished the idea of taking the war to the Chinese using the Brahmos missile groups under his command. It seemed fitting to respond in kind.
He had a paper lying in front of him at the moment which detailed the preliminary report of the damage done by the Chinese missiles to the infrastructure and deployed equipment of IV Corps under his command. He was supposed to hold off the Chinese with what remained of his artillery and UAV support. And he had to fight through a disrupted chain of command caused by dead or displaced commanders.
It is only fair that they get a taste of their own medicine…
“Good. What do you need from my side?” Yadav asked. Suman shook his head to clear it and then focused on the problem at hand.
“Okay, first I need real-time intelligence on what’s happening across the border. My UAV squadrons are starting to come back on line now, but I could use additional support. They have taken quite a battering. Especially the longer range Searcher-II force out near Walong under IV Corps. Lieutenant-General Chatterjee has been begging me for reinforcements in artillery and unmanned aircraft. Artillery I can do, but not with the unmanned aircraft,” Suman replied.