Pentagon taps Argonne to connect military supercomputers with major cloud platforms

By Matthew Griffin Computing 5th June 2026

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF

The Pentagon hires Argonne spin-out Parallel Works to bridge military HPC and the cloud.

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The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has awarded Parallel Works, an Illinois-based software company spun out of Argonne National Laboratory, a contract to provide a unified platform that connects military supercomputing centres with secure commercial cloud infrastructure. The contract, granted under the department’s High Performance Computing Modernisation Program (HPCMP), will allow scientists, engineers, and acquisition professionals across the DoD to access both on-premises and cloud-based computing resources through a single interface. The goal is to speed up the development and deployment of high-performance computing (HPC) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) workloads used for defence research and operations.

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Parallel Works said its ACTIVATE High Security Platform (HSP) will act as the control plane linking Defense Supercomputing Resource Centers (DSRCs) with commercial cloud services. The platform is designed to let users move workloads across environments while maintaining security requirements for sensitive data.

The company said researchers will be able to test and deploy workloads on emerging cloud infrastructure before those capabilities are integrated into the DoD’s supercomputing centres.

The platform has been approved at Impact Level 5 (IL5), one of the highest security classifications for non-classified DoD cloud environments. According to the company, it is among a small number of software platforms approved to handle export-controlled workloads, including International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) and Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI).

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The system is intended to address growing demand for computing power driven by AI development, simulation workloads, and digital modernisation programs across the military.

“AI-driven warfare and the ramp to digital modernisation are demanding far more model-sharing options than legacy infrastructure can provide,” said Keith Obenschain, Chief Technology Officer at HPCMP.

The platform offers on-demand access to cloud compute resources, allowing users to avoid traditional queue delays associated with shared supercomputing systems. It also enables organisations to expand computing capacity by distributing workloads across multiple environments and cloud providers.

Parallel Works said users will have access to cloud infrastructure from providers including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Oracle Cloud.

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As part of the contract rollout, the Naval Research Laboratory has already implemented the platform to support weather forecasting workloads.

According to the company, the system automates forecasting workflows while securely coordinating computing resources across defence and cloud environments. The approach is intended to improve reliability, speed up processing, and help redistribute workloads when demand spikes.

“The HPCMP contract allows our platform to support a broad range of mission-critical HPC and AI workloads across the DOD teams,” said Matthew Shaxted, CEO of Parallel Works.

The company said the environment can also serve as a secure testing ground for AI development tools and next-generation cloud architectures before they are adopted within the DoD’s existing supercomputing infrastructure.

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The contract reflects a broader push by the U.S. military to combine traditional supercomputing resources with commercial cloud services as AI models and data-intensive applications continue to increase computing requirements across defence operations.

Why does the military want to connect its supercomputers to commercial clouds?
AI and simulation workloads are outgrowing the DoD's own supercomputers, so a unified, IL5-secure platform lets researchers burst onto commercial cloud capacity on demand – avoiding queue delays and testing new infrastructure before it is built in-house.

Matthew Griffin / About Author

Matthew Griffin is a multi-award winning Futurist and expert in Disruption and Innovation, Geopolitics, Leadership, and Technology, who NASA have described as a "walking encyclopaedia of the future" and a "futurist Polymath." 15-time best selling author of the "Codex of the Future" series, Matthew is the Founder and Futurist in Chief of the 311 Institute, a global Futures and Deep Futures advisory firm working with royal households, world leaders, G7, G20, and G77 governments, NGOs, and multi-national mid and mega cap firms to help them explore, shape, and lead the next 50 years of business and society.

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