Yet things happen.
The province of Kashmir had been a bone of contention between India and Pakistan since 1947, and it remained a dangerous flashpoint. Should it flare up into open warfare, Pakistan might naturally call on China to pay the rent for its access to ports and airfields in Pakistan, and that would put Beijing in a most uncomfortable position. There had also been squabbles and mutual claims over slices of territory along the Indo-Chinese border that had caused conflict in the 1960’s.
Now, with most of China’s land army in Manchuria entangled with the Siberians, the last thing Beijing wanted was to have to move troops to the Indian border, in those mountainous regions that were so difficult where military operations were concerned.
At sea, China’s Indo-Arabian fleet was strong, but Beijing had enough on its hands in facing down the US and UK. If India joined that coalition, the sea lanes China had been trying to control and protect from the Middle East to Burma could be easily broken where they stretched around Sri Lanka. India’s eastern and western fleets could squeeze that chokepoint in a pincer move, and with the “Malacca Dilemma” still not solved, China could see its energy lifeline jugular decisively severed in such a scenario.
This is why Washington and London were urgently negotiating with India to consider active support for their coalition. Decisions made in New Delhi might therefore determine the outcome of the entire conflict in this region, and what happened here would likely decide the war. India knew this, and fully realized that it was a decisive Joker in the deck, it’s allegiance or neutrality having great consequences for both sides. If China could not control the sea lanes from the Middle East to the South China Sea, it was only a matter of time before it would have to sue for peace.
This made the price Beijing was paying for its seizure of the Ryukyus to secure the “First Island Chain” very high. It began with war against Japan, which soon brought the US into active operations in the Pacific. Then China supported long held plans in the dark corners of the mind of Saddam and Qusay Hussein, and the Arabian Nightmare was born. This led to the brief, violent actions against the Royal Navy in the Med, and again at Singapore, as one domino after another made its thundering fall. The regional squabble with Japan had become a world war in a matter of thirty days.
Now things were about to escalate further as Iraq prepared to unsheathe its Sword of the Desert. That meant the war for the great prize in the Middle East—Saudi Arabia, was about to begin.
That night, in the dark nested hollows of mountains in Iran, the grim opening salvos of that battle were preparing to launch. Iran had a large inventory of ballistic missiles, about 300 of its Shahab-1, 200 of the updated Shahab-2, and about 50 Shahab-3. The earliest models had little range, so it would be the #2 and #3 versions that would be used in this attack. To these, China had gifted Tehran with many batteries of its DF-11A missiles, and all these weapons had long posed a deadly threat to the fragile and vulnerable pipelines, refineries, terminals and oil fields of the region.
But those were not the targets. The entire point of this campaign was to secure the oil facilities intact, not to destroy them. Instead, the rain of arrows would fall on the bases and ports that hostile powers in the region would rely on in any conflict. The main targets selected were: King Khalid Airbase in northern Saudi Arabia, King Abdul Aziz AFB on the coast, Al-Udeid AFB in Qatar, and Al Dhafra AFB in the United Arab Emirates. The ports were not considered as vital in the Persian Gulf itself, as they would also prove useful when captured. Since hostile forces had to first get past the Chinese Indo-Arabian Fleet to access them, China did now worry about US Marines landing there, aside from a few battalions that were quartered in Bahrain and Qatar. Any other allied forces would head for Oman, and then move overland through the U.A.E. into Saudi Arabia.
At 03:00 in the dark of the early morning, the order was given to let the fire arrows go, and just over 100 missiles of various stripes would be launched. They would be coming very fast, at between 4500 and 6500 knots, and did not have far to fly, which made any defense a chancy thing. The Saudis had several Patriot batteries strung out along their coast in a defensive front, and these began to track and fire soon after the launch. They would get at least 20 confirmed kills, with three other missiles suffering significant deviation from their flight path that caused them to miss their targets entirely. The remaining arrows, about 75, would all hit the ground somewhere close to where they had been aimed, causing a great deal of chaos and damage.
At Dhafra AFB, one of the hardest hit, numerous weather shelters were flayed with shrapnel, and the cargo terminal building was heavily damaged and set on fire. Runways and access points were left with smoking craters, an avgas bunker was immolated, and many hangars damaged. At Ad-Udeid in Qatar, two big B-1B bombers that had been hosted in open parking were totally destroyed, along with two F-15 Eagles, three Seahawks, and a KE-3A Sentry Tanker left burning on the tarmacs. Dark fingers of smoke began to rise over all these air bases, but the response to the attack would be swift and pointed.
The US had launched a single B-1 just minutes before the missiles came, and it was loaded with 24 JASSM cruise missiles on a mission to strike the Iranian radar network. This had been part of a standard patrol that had been mounted each day in the event of hostilities, and that day had come. It quickly dispatched its ordnance, hitting coastal radars from Bushehr to Bandar Abbas, which slowly blinded the Iranian air and naval commands. The island of Abu Musa was also struck to neutralize that airfield near the Strait of Hormuz, and then the main campaign would begin with the fighter bombers.
Saudi Arabia was infuriated by the surprise attack, even though they expected trouble soon. Yet they had no similar strategic missile brigade to counterattack.[1] Instead it would send its Tornado Fighters up with Storm Shadow cruise missiles, and they would not be alone. Qatar immediately ordered a reprisal against the Shiraz SSM complex that had attacked Al-Udeid, which remained operational in spite of the damage. For this it sent a squadron of nine Rafael fighters up, each carrying a pair of SCALP missiles, the same as the British Storm Shadow.
The USAF had another B-1 loaded and ready, and there were nine F-15’s ready to go with JASSM. The US Army did not have ground launched SSM’s to throw back at the enemy either, but the Air Force had plenty of wings that could get the job done. Over the next three hours, in a pre-planned strike campaign, the Saudi and USAF units based in the Kingdom, and in Qatar, would begin to systematically take Iran’s air defense and missile complex facilities apart. The Bushehr Naval base docks in the north were also destroyed. Only missile TEL’s that were hidden in mountain caves for a second missile strike would survive to make another attack on Al-Udeid, but the airfield was massive, and most of those missiles simply found the empty desert around it, doing little more damage.
With that, the rain of arrows would burn out, but the real fighting was about to begin.
There had been no US Naval presence inside the Persian Gulf when the war broke out, except for the single LA Class sub Pasadena. A second LA Class boat, the Toledo, was lurking in the widening maw of the passage south of the Strait of Hormuz. All other local USN units were in the Arabian Sea bases of Oman.
1
In our time, the Saudis bough the DF-3 and DF-21 ballistic missiles from China, but that had not happened here, for obvious reasons.