LUCERNE, Switzerland -- The Swiss Army is known for inventing the pocket knife, providing guards for the pope, and for not marching against an enemy since 1798.

That has left officers from this neutral nation searching for something to do with their military expertise. Their new target: the office.

Late last year, the army began marketing a four-day management course to companies. For a tuition of $1,245, executives learn decision-making and leadership skills from camouflage-clad Swiss army officers, at a military base near the picturesque Lake Lucerne.

"It's cheaper than going to Harvard," says Maj. Gen. Ulrich Zwygart, who started touting the program about a year ago. "The stuff you learn here about decision-making and strategy is relevant in a takeover situation, too."

Actually, the "Transfer Leadership" class is more like an episode of the TV show "Survivor." Executives from companies such as Siemens AG stay in a military bunker -- chosen by the army for its survivalist atmosphere and lack of cellphone reception. Recruits are given case studies to solve, based on historic military situations. While digging for answers, they go for almost 36 hours without much sleep. They are allowed, though, to down sodas and Swiss chocolates -- part of the Army's official rations -- to stay awake.

The class's two full-time instructors are part of Switzerland's army, which is made up mostly of reserve soldiers. At any one time, the army has about 140,000 soldiers on standby duty. Although it has participated in peacekeeping missions, such as in the Balkans, the Swiss Army hasn't been engaged in full-on combat since the Napoleonic Wars. A troop of Swiss Guards, clad in armor and red-feather-topped helmets, still watch over the Vatican. That gig is a holdover from 1506, when Pope Julius II hired Swiss mercenaries for the job.

Even though it doesn't need many soldiers, the country has kept its historic policy of mandatory conscription. All Swiss men typically attend an 18-week basic-training course after they turn 18, as well as refresher courses later on. Through the 1970s and 1980s, the army was a popular networking venue. Many aspiring bankers were routed through its officer training school.

But since the late 1980s, the army has had to work harder to prove its relevancy. An outfit called the Group for Switzerland Without an Army helped stage a referendum to eliminate the army in 1989, an idea that won favor with 35 percent of voters. More recently, the group has been fighting a proposed $1.25 billion budget for new armed-forces equipment. "We find it particularly reprehensible to have one of the largest rearmament campaigns of recent years, without knowing what the army is for," the group's Web site says.

To fight back, the army is taking steps to make itself more in tune with today's young Swiss. It started letting male soldiers wear their hair long in ponytails. And as a way to show that its training regimen is applicable to civilian and even corporate life, the army is pushing itself as a learning lab for executives.

Maj. Gen. Zwygart, the head of the Swiss Armed Forces College, spent much of last year picking the brains of top executives at Swiss companies such as Swiss Life and UBS AG. In addition to asking about their training needs, he wanted to know why more companies don't encourage their employees to go through officer training. (Answer: It takes too much time away from civilian work.) From those conversations, the Army began shaping a four-day course.

One recent Tuesday morning, at the main building of the Swiss Armed Forces College here, five men and one woman, from such companies as Siemens and a Swiss bank, reported for management duty. They were greeted by Col. Beat Mueller, a 53-year-old former commander of a Swiss Army bunker fortress and now an instructor at the college.

Col. Mueller explained that participants wouldn't be given a curriculum. "That way you won't know what to expect."

The first lesson was the Swiss Army's five steps to problem solving: initiation, orientation, concept development, plan development, and issuing orders to execute the plan. Initiation, for example, requires identifying problems and classifying them according to their urgency, Col. Mueller explained.

The class rowed, in a dinghy, for an hour across Lake Lucerne to a small jetty at the foot of a steep cliff. It was the entrance to a Swiss army bunker that was taken off the "top secret" list in 1995.

There, Col. Mueller assigned a new task: plot a rescue mission for a hijacked airplane. The class spent hours working through the army's five steps to come up with a plan. Each time it thought it was close, Col. Mueller added new details that complicated the scenario.

By close to 3 a.m., one student, Erwin Lander, an IT specialist at a Zurich-based bank, suggested landing an aircraft at an airport and launching an attack from the runway. But another student objected, saying the airport maps weren't good enough to determine if it was safe to land. "I'm sorry, I'm not going to put this mission at risk because we lack detailed maps," said Daniel Flueck, who works at the Swiss Federal Department for Defense, Civil Protection and Sport.

"Let's just assume we can land," Mr. Lander shot back.

Col. Mueller stepped in. "We're losing sight of the objective and getting into a discussion about irrelevant details. This is a classic problem of people who are tired and under pressure."

The class agreed to go with Mr. Lander's plan. Then Col. Mueller let everyone go to bed.

The next morning, Col. Mueller explained that the exercise had been a re-enactment of "Operation Thunderbolt," in July 1976 when Israeli forces landed at Entebbe airport and freed the hostages. Following the operation, the Swiss army interviewed eye witnesses to gather additional material to use to teach military personnel, Col. Mueller said.

And how does this help back at the office? Mr. Lander, who took the class at the suggestion of his boss, wasn't immediately sure how much was applicable to his work at a Zurich bank. Still, after the course, he prepared a PowerPoint presentation for his staff on the importance of analyzing problems as a means to solving them.

Stefan Wesenauer, a manager at German engineering giant Siemens, says "The methodology isn't bad but you can't apply it directly into everyday working life." He adds: "It would be best to go with my own team. That way you can learn about your own staff."