"It takes just 10 minutes to complete a data center. You can immediately monitor targets and deploy drones."
At the booth of Anduril, an artificial intelligence (AI) defense company, set up in the center of the exhibition hall of "Amazon Web Services (AWS) Summit 2026" at the Walter E. Convention Center in Washington, D.C. on Monday, a line formed to view the Anduril data center displayed alongside AWS's modular data center. Visitors who heard the Anduril staff's explanation that a data center could be built within 10 minutes after the equipment arrived on site reacted with surprise.
Combining "Menace-I," the container body housing core equipment, the "Menace-T" tactical command platform, and the "Menace-X" mobile distributed command and control system creates a mobile data center that can be deployed in wartime. When a helicopter or transport aircraft delivers Menace-I to the site, a data center is built within 10 minutes and an on-site command and control post begins operating. As the use of AI in military operations increases, the ability to build a data center at the necessary moment has become important.
Menace-I stands 10 to 20 feet (3 to 6 meters) tall and weighs about 4.5 tons based on the 10-foot version. An Anduril official explained, "Because the equipment is designed to operate independently, it continues to function even if communications or power are cut at any point," adding, "Even if the connection to the cloud (a virtual space connected via the internet) is lost, all information is retained."
Anduril transports tens of thousands of data centers each year, has operated 50,000 hours on the battlefield over four years, and has been deployed in the war with Iran. Tom Keane, senior vice president of engineering at Anduril, said, "Customers involved in Midnight Hammer (the military operation against Iran) in the Middle East are deploying Menace."
AWS said the previous day that it had partnered with Anduril to enable AWS Outposts to be mounted on Menace. Outposts allows the world's No. 1 AWS cloud service to run on local infrastructure as well. It can provide information and functions from the battlefield to the central command center, improving overall combat capability. It is also assessed as useful against swarm drone attacks, which have become a core force. Liz Martin, general manager of AWS's global defense division, stressed, "Outposts have been deployed in key operational areas."
