AWS Takes Flight With $581M Air Force Cloud Contract

Amazon Web Services (AWS)has landed a $581 million contract with the U.S. Air Force to support its Cloud One program, marking another significant win in the government cloud market.

“This contract provides for Amazon Cloud Service in support of the Air Force’s Cloud One Program and their customers,” the U.S. Department of Defense said in announcing the award.

AWS cloud services delivered through US data centers come to the Air Force

The deal is a firm-fixed-price contract that runs through December 7, 2028, and covers AWS cloud services delivered through designated data centers across the contiguous United States. 

While the headline number is sizable, only about $3.5 million is being obligated upfront, with the rest expected to grow over time as workloads increase.

Cloud One serves as the Air Force’s go-to cloud environment, supporting everything from day-to-day operations to high-priority mission workloads. It’s built as a multi-vendor platform, giving the Department of Defense access to commercial cloud services that can scale quickly while staying in line with security and compliance requirements.

What Cloud One is designed to do

The platform also simplifies how teams work in the cloud. Rather than creating their own infrastructure, mission teams can wire into a centralized environment built to support application development, data analysis, and other core workloads, while staying within the super-strict compliance guidelines.

“Work will be performed at the contractor’s designated facilities across the contiguous U.S. and is expected to be completed by Dec. 7, 2028,” the government said in an official statement. “This award is the result of a sole source acquisition.”

The contract will be managed by the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center at Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts, which oversees much of the Air Force’s digital modernization work.

AWS brings its GovCloud regions into play here, which are physically and logically isolated environments operated by U.S. citizens. These regions are designed specifically for government agencies with high compliance needs and have become a core part of AWS’s public sector strategy.

Up in the cloud(s)

Cloud One is part of the Air Force’s move toward using multiple cloud providers instead of putting everything with a single vendor. The idea is to keep things fairly flexible while still meeting the security and performance requirements of defense workloads.

AWS isn’t alone here. Microsoft also secured a $170 million Cloud One contract earlier this year, continuing its long-standing work with the Air Force. 

That deal, like AWS’s, runs through 2028 and supports cloud services delivered through Azure.

The program dates back to 2022, when Cloud One was rolled out as a shared cloud environment to provide the Air Force with a consistent foundation without locking it into a single provider. 

AWS, Microsoft, Google, and eventually Oracle were all part of that original setup.

For AWS, contracts like this tend to be long-term plays. Once these systems are in place, they usually grow over time and become deeply embedded. 

It’s also another example of how government agencies are increasingly relying on commercial cloud providers as they modernize their IT environments.

This shift reflects what Channel Insider has been tracking across federal IT: agencies are increasingly relying on commercial cloud platforms to modernize infrastructure while maintaining strict security controls.