By Marcus Weisgerber

The U.S. Army is negotiating with Carlyle and CyrusOne to build commercial data centers on military bases in Texas and Utah.

Under the Army's vision, the companies will build and operate the facilities on underutilized land at the bases. In return, the Army will get a yet-to-be-determined portion of the data center's computing power that it could use for its increasing number of AI-driven weapon systems. Excess power generated could be sold back into the local grid.

"This will be the first hyper-scale data center that the Pentagon has ever done," Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said. "It is exactly the kind of thing that we need to be partnering with outside industry to empower our soldiers so they have the compute to answer all of the questions that will come up in modern conflict."

The Army is negotiating 50-year lease deals, and the developers will also have to build and operate "comprehensive behind-the-meter power and water solutions" for the data centers, it said in a statement announcing the data centers. The Army hopes to have the data center at Fort Bliss, Texas, fully up and running by 2028 and the one at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah by 2029.

Beyond data centers, the Army is looking at doing similar leasing arrangements for critical mineral processing and other types of manufacturing.

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 26, 2026 06:02 ET (10:02 GMT)

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