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Strategic Crisis Exercise
An invitation to attend the Strategic Crisis Exercise (SCE) involves a one-day visit to the U.S. Army War College to observe and participate in this annual exercise held in the Center for Strategic Leadership, Collins Hall. SCE is an experiential learning event set eight years in the future that allows students to integrate and apply their knowledge of the strategic and operational levels acquired during the academic year in a virtual world through a simulation-driven exercise.
SCE reflects political and military play at the operational and strategic levels including the interagency, Pentagon-military, theater strategic, and inter-national levels. Students role play elements of the National Security Council, Department of Homeland Security, National Economic Council, and the Departments of State and Defense, in addition to the military roles that include the Combatant Commanders, the Joint Staff, the Service Chiefs, the Service Staffs, and the Supporting Combatant Commanders. In the multiple crises scenario exercise, students have to participate in the interagency process, develop Presidential Decision Directives, develop strategic guidance, allocate forces, distribute strategic lift, execute campaign plans, and negotiate conditions of conflict termination.
Subject matter experts from corporations, State Department, and other federal and state organizations also participate and provide realistic advice to problems the students encounter. A press organization covers the exercise by interviewing the students who role-play senior officers in all of the Services. This group also provides hourly news flashes and reports, via closed-circuit monitors, to simulate the environment the students will possibly face in future assignments. Additionally, Congressional leaders participate in the exercise either in person or by VTC. The SCE is normally held in the late March early April timeframe for a two-week period.
The Center for Strategic Leadership (CSL), located in Collins Hall, serves as an education center and high technology laboratory focused on the Army's decisionmaking process. It works at the interagency, strategic, and operational level in support of the Army's senior Leadership, the USAEC, Combatant Commanders, Joint Staff, and Interagency participants. The CSL conducts wargaming to explore alternatives, provide insights, identify issues for research and analysis, generate discussions of national security matters, and practice decisionmaking under a variety of situations. The Center operates a Global Command and Control System (GCCS) facility in support of the USAWC. CSL is comprised of five divisions: the Operations and Gaming Division, the Science and Technology Division, the Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute, the Strategic Experiential Education Group, and the Management and Logistics Division.
To learn more about CSL or the SCE go the Center for Strategic Leadership website - http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usacsl