Strategic decisions are not necessary, the to a large extend fully dynamic campaign engine creates missions at different focal points across the island. At the beginning the goal is to disturb the upcoming invasion as much as possible without having the chance to stop it. Later in the simultaneously running air and ground war the player has to support ground units, throw sand into the flow of support lines, take over strategically important targets and of course get air superiority. Further mission types are CAP, SEAD, escort, destroy ships and cruise missiles. In case of a mission failure a short time later a new one is generated which deals with the problem in a slightly different manner.
Main focus is quick and intense action, but the overall campaign flow is very belivable.
Within the limits of the small combat area the engine takes rules of military doctrins into account and unexpected actions and reactions create some intermediate chaos that makes sense. Unfortunately the immersion often gets disturbed by blinking menus informing about activities of other pilots and mission announcements. In practice one has to interrupt a dogfight to setup the next flight in form of weapon selection and waypoint adjustment. Missing that lets the AI sometimes start the missions with inadequate weapons, after the necessary takeover of that flight later you're in for a very likely mission failure. Infos about news reports while flying are also strange.