Microsoft has been awarded a $170.4 million cloud contract by the US Air Force.

Revealed in a statement published by the Department of War (DoW, aka Department of Defense) on January 21, the contract is part of the Cloud One Program, of which Google and Amazon Web Services are also part.

The contract is a firm-fixed-price task order, and will see Microsoft Azure cloud services offered to the Air Force and customers of the Cloud One platform.

The announcement adds: "Work will be performed at the contractor's designated facilities across the contiguous US and is expected to be completed by Dec. 7, 2028." The contractor is currently listed as the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts.

The Cloud One is the Air Force's cloud platform, separate from the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability program. Revealed in 2022, Cloud One was described by then CIO of the Air Force, Lauren Knausenberger, as an "$800 million service relying on AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud (Oracle is promised to come soon), that is available to the Air Force, as well as other parts of the DoD." The first iteration expired in 2024.

Microsoft previously won a contract with the Air Force to support its Advanced Battle Management System in 2020.

In July 2025, Microsoft took some heat after it was revealed that the company was using engineers based in China to provide technical assistance on the US military cloud, later agreeing to stop using the so-called "digital escorts."

In September 2025, Microsoft awarded the US government up to $6bn in discounts for the next three years of spending on Azure cloud computing services, Microsoft 365, Copilot, Dynamics 365, and cybersecurity tools.