Brig. Gen. Jeth Rey has been appointed the new director of the U.S. Army’s Network Modernization Cross-Functional Team (CFT), succeeding former director Maj. Gen. Peter Gallagher, who retired from the Army in May.
The N-CFT is a part of the Army Futures Command – the newest four-star led command –stood up to focus on emerging tech and future battlefield weapons. Under the leadership of Gallagher, the first director of the N-CFT, the Army rolled out capability processes sets, which are new sets of tactical network tools developed and delivered biannually to soldiers. This year, they deployed Capability Set’21 to address immediate gaps in the tactical network.
In his new role, Rey will lead a team of engineers and network scientists from across the Army focused on improving the networks the Army uses in battle.
“All modernization capabilities touch the network,” Rey said in a statement. “The network is the center of gravity, so we need to support them as well.”
Rey’s end goal is to deliver a network that is expeditionary, mobile, hardened, and intuitive — especially as access to data becomes a pivotal element to achieving future battlefield advantage.
“The future is about data and accessing and protecting it across transport-agnostic capabilities,” Rey said. “Going from 5G WiFi to terrestrial circuits, to satellite-based systems as an automatic transition will give us greater operational flexibility across the board.”
In his new position, Rey also will be seeking input from the Department of the Army G6, Army Futures Command leadership, and the seven other CFTs charged with executing the Army’s modernization priorities – from vehicles and aircraft to fires and missile defense.
Before this new appointment, Rey was CIO/J-6 of Central Command. He also served as the director of operations/G-3 for Army Cyber Command, and as the executive officer to the Army CIO/G-6 and commander of the 112th Special Operations Signal Battalion.
