The United States military is quietly transforming underutilized land on its most sensitive installations into commercial AI infrastructure, handing long-term leases to some of the world’s most powerful investment firms in exchange for computing access. At sites ranging from a chemical and biological weapons testing range in Utah to a major Army base in Texas, the architecture of a new public-private arrangement is taking shape — one with consequences that stretch far beyond the Pentagon’s balance sheet.

Land-for-Computing: How the Program Works

The initiative flows directly from a Trump executive order directing federal agencies to open non-excess government land to commercial data center development. The Army’s implementation mechanism is its Enhanced Use Lease program, which allows private companies to occupy military land in exchange for services — in this case, computing power rather than cash. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is handling lease negotiations and environmental review for each site.

In late March 2026, the Army conditionally selected two companies to enter exclusive negotiations for the first confirmed deals. Carlyle, the global private equity and investment firm, was chosen for approximately 1,384 acres at Fort Bliss, Texas. CyrusOne, a data center operator jointly held by funds managed by KKR and BlackRock — two of the largest investment firms in the world — was selected for a parcel at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah. Each project carries an estimated price tag of approximately $2 billion, according to the Financial Times.

The companies will be responsible for financing, building, operating, maintaining, and eventually decommissioning the facilities, the Army stated, describing the land as “underutilized but non-excess Army land at no upfront cost to taxpayers.” The data center at Fort Bliss is expected to be operational by 2027, while the Dugway project is projected for completion by 2029.

Where These Facilities Are Being Built

The geography of the selected sites raises questions that go beyond routine infrastructure planning.

Dugway Proving Ground, Utah

The Dugway site sits approximately an hour’s drive from the nearest community. It is the installation where the U.S. military conducts its primary chemical and biological weapons testing. The Army’s own contracting documents describe the parcel as previously used for grazing. Three parcels at Dugway total roughly 3,466 acres, according to Data Center Dynamics. One parcel of approximately 1,201 acres is already spoken for under the CyrusOne agreement.

CyrusOne is jointly held by funds managed by KKR and BlackRock — two investment entities with combined assets under management measured in the trillions of dollars. The proximity of a commercial hyperscale data center to the military’s primary chemical and biological weapons testing range has not been publicly addressed in Army statements reviewed for this article.

Fort Bliss, Texas

The Carlyle-selected parcel at Fort Bliss presents a different set of contextual details. One of the proposed sites is described as being approximately a half-mile from civilian housing. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll described the Fort Bliss facility to the Wall Street Journal as “the first hyper-scale data center that the Pentagon has ever done,” and said in a March announcement that “AI is a strategic asset for the Army” that “is a force multiplier, supports future transformation and requirements, keeps the Army ahead of our adversaries, and generates resiliency across the force.”

A Dozen Installations and Growing

Fort Bliss and Dugway are not isolated experiments. According to reporting by Military.com, the Army and the Department of the Air Force have opened at least a dozen military installations to commercial data center developers over the past year and a half. Two of those arrangements have moved to conditional agreements; the remainder are still in the proposal stage.

The scale of the program — spanning multiple military branches and a growing list of installations — reflects a broader federal posture that treats AI infrastructure development as a national security imperative. The arrangement is structured so that the government acquires computing capacity without direct capital expenditure, while private firms gain long-term access to secured federal land with established infrastructure, power, and protection.

Who Holds the Keys

The corporate profile of the selected firms is notable. Carlyle Group is one of the largest alternative investment management companies in the world. CyrusOne’s ownership by funds managed by KKR and BlackRock places control of a prospective military-adjacent AI facility in the hands of asset managers whose investor bases span sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, and institutional capital globally.

The Enhanced Use Lease model means these companies are not contractors in the traditional Pentagon sense — they are long-term tenants on military land, responsible for the full lifecycle of facilities that will process data for the U.S. armed forces. The precise terms of what computing access the Army receives in return, what data governance frameworks apply, and what security classifications govern the facilities have not been made fully public in the materials reviewed for this article.

Environmental and Community Review

The Army Corps of Engineers is tasked with conducting environmental review alongside lease negotiations. At Dugway, the proximity to active chemical and biological testing ranges presents environmental considerations distinct from a civilian industrial site. At Fort Bliss, the half-mile distance between one proposed parcel and civilian housing raises questions about community impact assessment processes.

Neither the scope of those reviews nor their timelines have been detailed in publicly available statements from the Army or the Corps of Engineers as of the reporting reflected in this article.

The Strategic Framing

Pentagon leadership has been consistent in its public framing of the initiative as a competitiveness measure. Army Secretary Driscoll’s language — AI as a “force multiplier” that keeps the Army “ahead of our adversaries” — positions the data center program within the broader geopolitical competition over artificial intelligence dominance.

What the public framing does not fully address is the structural novelty of the arrangement: some of the world’s most powerful private capital is now positioned to build and operate computing infrastructure on the grounds of the United States military, under lease terms negotiated by the Army Corps of Engineers, on land that in at least one case neighbors the nation’s primary chemical and biological weapons testing range.

Whether that arrangement represents a pragmatic acceleration of military modernization or a significant transfer of leverage to private financial interests operating on sovereign military land is a question the program’s architects have largely left for others to examine.

This article draws on reporting from Activist Post and Federal News Network.

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