Amazon Web Services and Anduril are combining the tech giant’s on-site cloud computers and the defense contractor’s mobile data center to bring edge computing to the frontlines. Both have already been used during the Iran war.
Anduril’s containerized command and data center, Menace-I, can now be outfitted with Amazon Web Services’s Outpost, the two companies announced Tuesday. With two people, the mobile data center “can stand up in under 10 minutes and moves by truck, rail, airlift, or helicopter sling load,” the company said in a press release.
“Whether it’s an intelligence analyst in the field or whether it’s a flightline operator, someone who’s literally trying to get information off of the system, the sensor, and making a meaningful decision about it. What’s really different, and what we’re seeing is this ruggedized edge,” said Liz Martin, AWS’ global defense managing director and general manager. “It takes very many shapes.”
During a panel at the AWS Summit in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, an Anduril company executive told reporters that Menace-I had been used during Operation Epic Fury and the containerized command center has been deployed with the Army, Air Force, Marines, and Navy. AWS Outpost has also been deployed in the region, but in protected structures, Martin said. Combining the two together would allow the U.S. military and other defense buyers to put cloud computing as close to the battlefield action as possible and cut down on the time it takes to transfer data in combat.
On Tuesday, AWS named the California-based contractor its “preferred edge provider” for defense customers.
“We’re bringing that cloud capability, we’re bringing it down to the edge, and then we’re enabling you to run applications that may exist in the cloud down at the edge to provide data down at the edge, or to send things from the edge up to the cloud, where they can be analyzed,” said Tom Keane, Anduril’s senior vice president of engineering. “What we’re doing is we’re providing capabilities for commanders that today they either don’t have or are simply too expensive and too difficult for them to practically field and use in real world.”
Anduril’s containerized command center was first launched in 2022. Last year, U.S. Marines strapped a Menace-I onto a CH-53K King Stallion helicopter for transport.
It’s not clear how survivable the shipping container data center would be on the battlefield. During Operation Epic Fury, six U.S. Army reservists were killed when a makeshift operations center fortified by concrete walls was hit in an Iranian attack.
“I think part of what we’re seeing in the world right now is a desire to be distributing many systems, as opposed to a singular, highly resilient system,” Keane said. “The idea of distribution as a mechanism for fault tolerance, having many, is becoming increasingly important, is what we’re hearing from our customers, as opposed to having a singular thing that is immensely and infinitely robust.”
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