Ember & Oak Leadership | Decision Lab

Joint Warfighting Decision Simulation

Assume a senior role inside a joint task force and lead one campaign from crisis through culmination. Your decisions alter the operating environment, constrain later options, and return as consequences.

35–45 minutes  |  Four campaign acts  |  Eight connected decisions  |  Doctrine-informed debrief

Operation Resolute Passage

Your command

You are the deputy commander of Joint Task Force Meridian. The fictional island nation of Talaris is facing military coercion from the regional power of Ordan. Ordan is combining maritime pressure, cyber effects, information operations, and long-range strike forces to create a political outcome before the coalition can respond.

Commander’s intent

Prevent a fait accompli, preserve coalition access, protect the force, and retain credible options if deterrence fails.

Planning term: A fait accompli is an adversary action completed quickly enough to leave others with the choice of accepting the outcome or escalating to reverse it.

Your responsibility

Frame the changing problem, integrate the staff, recommend risk, and keep the task force aligned as information and authorities degrade.

How this is different

No answer is scored as simply correct. You must identify what each decision protects, name the risk you accept, and live with delayed consequences.

Campaign debrief

The AAR reconstructs your decision chain, identifies your operating tendencies, connects choices to doctrine, and presents a counterfactual branch.

Choose the learning mode

Individual mode uses competing staff perspectives and reflection prompts to create the friction normally supplied by a group discussion.

Your typed reasoning remains in this browser and is not transmitted or stored externally.

Independent professional-development simulation. This fictional exercise is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Department of War. It does not reproduce the official Joint Warfighting Evaluation or predict performance on any military assessment.

Ember & Oak Leadership | Joint Warfighting Lab

Joint Task Force Command Wargame

Command a fictional joint task force across six connected operational periods. Build an operational approach from a live theater map, employ Air Force, Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Space Force, cyber, and special operations capabilities, then watch the force execute your plan.

Animated 2D campaign  |  Transparent capability estimates  |  Compounding consequences  |  Doctrine-informed AAR

Operation Resolute Passage

Assume command of Joint Task Force Meridian

Ordan is attempting to change the political and military situation around the island nation of Talaris before the coalition can organize an effective response. Your force has enough capability to deny a rapid fait accompli, but not enough readiness, access, or lift to solve every problem simultaneously.

Understand the theater

Each period provides a map, mission definition, route, adversary threat, political constraint, and intelligence uncertainty.

Build the operation

Assign components to missions and watch each required effect update. Readiness changes the capability a component can actually provide.

Execute and assess

Watch the force move, observe the adversary response, and receive a transparent assessment showing what worked, what was missing, and what changed.

How capability estimates work: Requirements and contributions use a common 0–10 planning scale. A component’s contribution is adjusted by readiness. Intelligence uncertainty may change a requirement during execution, and that change will be disclosed in the assessment.

Independent professional-development wargame. This fictional exercise uses no classified information and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Department of War. It does not reproduce an official assessment.