Chimera

All six J-11s were blotted out in loud whumps as salvo after salvo of R-77 continued to slam into the disintegrating airframes. At least a dozen missiles veered off course into the night sky, chasing imaginary chaff targets once the aircraft had disintegrated into shards of metal.

On the Indian side the pilots were very clearly briefed about this. All fighters that were seeing the incoming Chinese missiles heading for them on their radars were authorized to break formation and evade.

Others were to punch afterburners and accelerate beyond this battlefield in order to chase down their primary target.

As far as the inbound missiles were concerned, there were a lot of them. The Chinese pilots had fired multiple salvos from each aircraft in their hopes of taking down at least a few, if not more of the enemy. Of the sixteen Indian Sukhois, eleven broke formation and dived for the ground, releasing chaff and activating onboard ECMs as they headed for the desert floor below on full afterburner.

The remaining five Su-30s punched afterburners and went supersonic as they spotted the receding signature of the Chinese KJ-2000 on the edge of their radar coverage…

* * *

On board the Chinese aircraft, the Lieutenant-Colonel piloting the aircraft was now lowering his altitude as much as he dared. His hands had become sweaty under the gloves.

His co-pilot, another Lieutenant-Colonel, was pressing his radio headset speaker closer to his mouth with his left hand while pushing himself to look around the sides of the cockpit glass. He was in direct contact with the flight-leader of the nine J-11s from the 19TH Fighter Division that were now converging on their position.

The incoming fighters were variously armed, as they had just arrived in theater and had not even been properly briefed about combat operations in the AO. But now they were getting a firsthand look at the desperate situation of the air-war over Tibet…

* * *

On the ground at Korla, the commander of the 26TH Air Division was ordered by Chen to launch the sole KJ-200 turboprop AEW aircraft from Korla so that the incoming eleven J-11s from Urumqi were not flying blind into a deadly combat zone.

A few minutes later the radar operations crew of this aircraft were scrambling towards their parked aircraft while the pilots initiated emergency engine startup. The crews were tired after having just returned from rotation and had not been expecting to be in the air until the KJ-2000 crew had returned after a few hours, with whom they were on twelve-hour patrol rotations.

As the first propeller started spinning on the ground and the pilots began switching on their helmet-mounted low-light goggles, five J-7s from Korla were also rolling out one behind the other towards the runway. The airbase was now declared under threat. And the base personnel were hardly prepared for it.

Very deep inside China, Korla was not expected to ever have to face such a threat. And so there was confusion on the ground as officers and men of the 26TH Air Division attempted to figure out what to do about their precious equipment and aircraft strewn about on an open tarmac…

* * *

Back over the skies above the desert, the five supersonic Indian Su-30s had closed enough with the lumbering KJ-2000 aircraft that they now fired off one R-77 per aircraft.

The RWR on board the Chinese aircraft lit up immediately and the Lieutenant-Colonel banked the aircraft to the side and attempted to dive; not easy for an aircraft the size of the Il-76. Unlike the Phalcon and its uprated engines, the Chinese Il-76 based AWACS was underpowered. And so there was little power to spare for these desperate maneuvers.

The Lieutenant-Colonel ordered his co-pilot to release all chaff and flare stores on board and went live over the radio shouting that his aircraft had been engaged by enemy fighters.

But his time had run out.

The first R-77 slammed into the port wing just between the two engines and the jarring explosion ripped through the wing, shredding the fuselage below. The Lieutenant-Colonel and his flight crew were thrown forward in their seats as the explosion whipped the massive aircraft across the sky. By the time he came through a second later, all warning lights and alarms were screeching inside the cockpit as his co-pilot attempted to pull the aircraft from its shallow dive.

He looked back and saw the flight engineer on the flight deck in a pool of blood from some shrapnel round. The fuselage had decompressed in the explosion. The aircraft shuddered again, this time the second R-77 had hit the aft side of the T-shaped horizontal stabilizer and the top section of that now fell away from the aircraft. He turned forward as his co-pilot screamed in horror. He had enough time only to see the rapidly approaching ground before it ripped through the cockpit…

* * *