Repetitive, manual tasks quietly drain time across the military. Since these automation efforts are not “flashy,” they rarely get the attention or funding they deserve—even when the return on investment is clear.
Effectively employing simple quantitative tools to free up space for *thinking* and *doing* - well done, Ryan! Kudos for the execution, and thanks to you and the War Quants team for sharing.
This VP-30 scheduling automation is a fantastic example of the efficiency gains hiding in plain sight within routine military processes. Freeing up that cognitive bandwidth is invaluable and underscores a key point for any advanced military: operational effectiveness is also about optimizing the human element in the decision cycle, not just weapon systems. When I analyze PLA C4ISR advancements on my Substack, 'Orders and Observations' (https://ordersandobservations.substack.com/), the underlying question is always how effectively its systems and processes enable rapid, informed decisions. Your work shows how pragmatic automation at the unit level is foundational to that kind of C4ISR agility.
Great article Ryan! So much processing power on so many desks and yet 99.9% of us use only 0.01% of it, mostly for email and creating rough visual displays (that and running constant system updates). Sometimes, all these computers even provide the opposite of automation--it takes more effort to create a presentation graphic with clip art and a mouse than it would with just a Sharpie and an overhead projector slide. Something, somewhere, did not go the way it was supposed to.
Every now and then I hear about an initiative to share useful tools/apps that folks have built (schedulers, assignment optimizers, TEEP builders, slide compilers, form fillers, etc.), but nothing seems to take off. Perhaps now that more folks can get into a little bit of coding with AI assistance, we'll see more automation tools being built and shared!
Effectively employing simple quantitative tools to free up space for *thinking* and *doing* - well done, Ryan! Kudos for the execution, and thanks to you and the War Quants team for sharing.
This VP-30 scheduling automation is a fantastic example of the efficiency gains hiding in plain sight within routine military processes. Freeing up that cognitive bandwidth is invaluable and underscores a key point for any advanced military: operational effectiveness is also about optimizing the human element in the decision cycle, not just weapon systems. When I analyze PLA C4ISR advancements on my Substack, 'Orders and Observations' (https://ordersandobservations.substack.com/), the underlying question is always how effectively its systems and processes enable rapid, informed decisions. Your work shows how pragmatic automation at the unit level is foundational to that kind of C4ISR agility.
Great article Ryan! So much processing power on so many desks and yet 99.9% of us use only 0.01% of it, mostly for email and creating rough visual displays (that and running constant system updates). Sometimes, all these computers even provide the opposite of automation--it takes more effort to create a presentation graphic with clip art and a mouse than it would with just a Sharpie and an overhead projector slide. Something, somewhere, did not go the way it was supposed to.
Every now and then I hear about an initiative to share useful tools/apps that folks have built (schedulers, assignment optimizers, TEEP builders, slide compilers, form fillers, etc.), but nothing seems to take off. Perhaps now that more folks can get into a little bit of coding with AI assistance, we'll see more automation tools being built and shared!
Thank you for the story! Very interesting! Is there a way to learn more about the project?