The US Air Force could allow a data center to be built on one or more of its bases in Alaska, according to a Request for Information posted by the department on sam.gov.

These bases include the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, located northeast of Anchorage; the Eielson Air Force Base, located southeast of Fairbanks; and the Clear Space Force Station, south of Nenana.

Specific land parcels, the availability of land, and the site conditions were not shared.

In government contracting, a Request for Information is a preliminary tool used by the government to gauge potential interest. It should be distinguished from a Request for Proposal, which is when vendors are formally invited to submit bids for a clearly defined project.

Those interested in submitting a response will need to provide information – this includes the capacity, height, and energy source – about its proposed data center. If and when a Request for Proposal is issued, it seems that the government may favor those with “experience in Arctic or sub-Arctic environments.”

The move to open up Air Force land follows a last-minute Biden-era executive order to explore whether parcels owned by the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy could be made available to data center developers.

The order was reworked by the Trump Administration, and the DOE announced 16 potential sites in April.

Last October, the Air Force revealed its plan to offer more than 3,000 acres of land on five of its military bases, although the Alaska bases mentioned were not included in this previous announcement.

Data center developers have expressed significant interest in these government-backed projects, where land would be leased for the data centers.

An industry day held in January by the Department of Energy about a potential data center at Savannah River Site – a nuclear weapons manufacturing facility – was attended by a large number of tech companies and hyperscalers, including Microsoft, CoreWeave, Google, Oracle, and Crusoe.