Pentagon Taps Argonne Spinout To Connect Military Supercomputers With Major Clouds

Authored by Neetika Walter via Interesting Engineering,

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 centers with secure commercial cloud infrastructure.

The contract, granted under the department's High Performance Computing Modernization 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 defense research and operations.

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 centers.

Connecting Defense Computing

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).

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

"AI-driven warfare and the ramp to digital modernization 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 organizations 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.

Accelerating Mission Deployment

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 defense 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.

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 defense operations.