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Cross_Functional_Teams

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Army Cross-Functional Teams (CFTs)

CFTs were the delivery mechanism of the 2018 Army_Futures_Command experiment: small general-officer-led teams with requirements, acquisition, S&T, test, and sustainment representatives in one room, chartered to compress JCIDS timelines by iterating requirements against prototypes. Each owned one of the Army_Modernization_Priorities. The Army_Transformation_Initiative dissolved the construct. Their functions now sit in Futures_and_Concepts_Command Future Capability Directorates.

FieldValue
TypeRequirements and modernization organizational construct
Chartered2017 (Army directive); stood up with Army_Futures_Command in 2018
ParentArmy_Futures_Command until October 2025
Status as of August 2026Dissolved as a standing construct; absorbed into Future Capability Directorates

What a CFT was

A CFT was led by a general officer or SES who reported directly to the Army_Futures_Command commanding general, not through a staff chain. It paired that lead with the relevant ASAALT Program Executive Officer, so that the person writing the requirement and the person buying against it were accountable to the same forum. The design intent was to break the sequential Defense_Acquisition_System handoff in which requirements are written, frozen, and then discovered to be unaffordable or obsolete.

CFTs were also the Army’s principal vehicle for soldier touchpoints: putting prototypes in front of units early and revising the requirement based on what came back.

The teams

The original eight (2018). Six aligned one-to-one with the Army_Modernization_Priorities:

CFTPriority areaHome
Long-Range Precision FiresLong_Range_Precision_FiresFort Sill, OK
Next-Generation Combat VehicleNext_Generation_Combat_VehicleDetroit Arsenal, MI
Future Vertical LiftFuture_Vertical_LiftRedstone Arsenal, AL
Network / C3IArmy_Network_ModernizationAberdeen Proving Ground, MD
Air and Missile DefenseAir_and_Missile_Defense_ModernizationFort Sill, OK
Soldier LethalitySoldier_LethalityFort Benning, GA

Plus two that cut across the priorities:

CFTScope
Synthetic Training EnvironmentLive-virtual-constructive training, simulation, terrain data
Assured Positioning, Navigation and Timing (APNT)GPS-denied navigation and timing

Later additions.

  • Contested Logistics CFT, added 2023, addressing sustainment under attack.
  • All-Domain Sensing CFT, announced March 2024, built on the Assured PNT CFT and reoriented toward long-range and deep sensing. Reporting at the time described the result as ten teams; the exact accounting of whether APNT persisted alongside it or was subsumed is not clean in public sources.

What happened to them

The Army_Transformation_Initiative, announced May 1, 2025, restructured both the requirements side (Army_Futures_Command into T2COM) and the acquisition side (ASAALT PEOs into Program Acquisition Executives). The CFT construct did not survive either.

The one transition documented in detail publicly:

  • Future Vertical Lift CFT merged with the Aviation Capability Development and Integration Directorate on October 1, 2025 to form the Aviation Future Capability Directorate, under Cain_Baker, at Redstone Arsenal. A farewell ceremony marked the conclusion of the CFT’s 2017 founding charter. Baker described it as hardwiring the CFT’s methods into the institutional Army rather than keeping them in a parallel organization.

The general pattern the Army has described is the same across the portfolios: CFT functions folded into the Future Capability Directorates under Futures_and_Concepts_Command, which replaced the CDIDs.

Verification gap

An authoritative public disposition for each individual CFT (Long-Range Precision Fires, Air and Missile Defense, Network, Soldier Lethality, Next-Generation Combat Vehicle, Synthetic Training Environment, Contested Logistics, All-Domain Sensing) was not found as of August 2026. Only the Future Vertical Lift transition is confirmed by name and date. Some CFT public affairs channels remained live into 2025. Treat any statement that a specific named CFT still exists, or that it was formally disestablished on a given date, as unverified until confirmed against an Army source.

Why it matters

The engagement model changed, not just the org chart. A CFT was a small, empowered, general-officer-fronted team that a company could work as a single relationship. FCDs are institutional directorates embedded with Centers of Excellence. The path is longer, more formal, and more tied to doctrine and training. Business development playbooks built on CFT access need to be rebuilt against Futures_and_Concepts_Command and the ASAALT portfolio structure.

CFT-era requirements are still the governing documents. Capability documents written and validated under CFT authority between 2018 and 2025 still baseline live programs. Those requirements are now exposed to re-validation by an organization that did not write them, which is both a risk to incumbents and an opening for challengers.

The Army’s stated diagnosis is worth reading closely. The reason given for dissolving the construct was that CFTs delivered capability the institutional Army could not absorb, because doctrine, formation design, and training were somewhere else. That diagnosis predicts how the Army will evaluate offerings going forward: a system with an accompanying concept of employment and training approach is favored over a system alone.

Watch the successor mechanism, not the label. The Army has not abandoned the underlying idea of compressing requirements against prototypes. It has moved it into experimentation (Futures_and_Concepts_Command experiment series, Project Convergence Capstone) and into Transformation_in_Contact unit rotations. Those are the current equivalents of a CFT soldier touchpoint.

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