A MARITIME SECURITY WARGAME
The Baltic Sea is a contested waterway. Subsea cables, pipelines and offshore wind farms — the arteries of northern Europe's economy and information space — cross a corridor that has, in recent years, seen a rising pattern of anchor drags, unexplained damage and ambiguous vessel behaviour. Attribution is slow. Attribution is political. Attribution is often impossible.
Tonight, a bulk carrier with ambiguous flag registration is moving erratically through a subsea cable corridor. Signal degradation has begun on at least one critical data link. What happens next depends on who you are, what you are allowed to do, and how fast you move.
Play as one of 8 stakeholder roles responding to what may (or may not) be a hybrid maritime attack — across 10 turns.
You own subsea data cables. Your mandate is uptime, latency, and rapid fault detection. You cannot use force or detain vessels.
You operate an offshore wind farm. You are sensitive to physical risk proximity and may locally shut down operations.
You operate high-value, high-consequence offshore infrastructure. Shutdowns are expensive; you require strong confirmation before acting.
You command naval assets in the operational area. You can intercept, shadow, and (per ROE) board vessels. Use of force is constrained by ROE and political directives.
You enforce maritime law. You can board and inspect vessels and detain under legal justification, but must operate within strict legal thresholds.
You coordinate multinational maritime operations and intelligence sharing. You cannot unilaterally deploy national assets.
You manage political stability, diplomatic positioning, and crisis communications. You can authorize escalation but cannot act operationally.
You collect and assess intelligence (SIGINT, HUMINT, OSINT, satellite, allied feeds) and issue warnings and attribution assessments. You cannot deploy operational assets or use force.
Clearer information, fairly manageable trade-offs.
Degraded information, higher consequence sensitivity.
Severe ambiguity, no safe choices.
PLAYER TIPS