Pentagon; the arms industry's biggest customer and Iran war launcher
Military · United States · Organization
The US Department of Defense is the world's largest buyer of weapons and the main source of revenue for US arms makers. USAspending shows contract obligations of $456.9B in FY2023, $445.8B in FY2024 and $491.8B in FY2025, about $1.76T including FY2026 data published so far. It runs the production lines that supply Israel. In May 2024 the Air Force awarded Boeing a $7.5B JDAM contract that included foreign-sales funds. Pentagon stocks were drawn down for Israel and then refilled with $4.4B from the April 2024 supplemental. On 28 February 2026 it launched Operation Epic Fury against Iran alongside Israel, which the CBO says cost about $38B by 1 August 2026. Amnesty found JDAM parts in Tehran neighbourhoods where US-Israeli strikes killed civilians, and said the attacks may amount to war crimes. The industry was rewarded promptly: weeks after the main fighting, RTX won a $20.7B multi-year AMRAAM contract in September 2026.
● confirmed by a primary document · ○ reported
Award ID (PIID): HQ003423D0019 | Award type: INDEFINITE DELIVERY / INDEFINITE QUANTITY | Recipient: AMAZON WEB SERVICES, INC. | Awarding agency: Department of Defense / Washington Headquarters Services | Description: JOINT WARFIGHTING CLOUD CAPABILITY (JWCC) | Date signed: 2022-12-07 | Base and all options value: $9,000,000,000.00
Through the contract, which has a $9 billion ceiling, the Pentagon aims to bring enterprisewide cloud computing capabilities to the Defense Department across all domains and classification levels, with the four companies competing for individual task orders.
Award ID (PIID): HQ003423D0017 | Award type: INDEFINITE DELIVERY / INDEFINITE QUANTITY | Recipient: GOOGLE PUBLIC SECTOR LLC | Awarding agency: Department of Defense / Washington Headquarters Services | Description: JOINT WARFIGHTING CLOUD CAPABILITY (JWCC) | Date signed: 2022-12-07 | Base and all options value: $9,000,000,000.00
Through the contract, which has a $9 billion ceiling, the Pentagon aims to bring enterprisewide cloud computing capabilities to the Defense Department across all domains and classification levels, with the four companies competing for individual task orders.
Award ID (PIID): HQ003423D0018 | Award type: INDEFINITE DELIVERY / INDEFINITE QUANTITY | Recipient: ORACLE AMERICA, INC | Awarding agency: Department of Defense / Washington Headquarters Services | Description: JOINT WARFIGHTING CLOUD CAPABILITY (JWCC) | Date signed: 2022-12-07 | Base and all options value: $9,000,000,000.00
the awardees of the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability—or JWCC—contract, with Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft and Oracle each receiving an award. Through the contract, which has a $9 billion ceiling, the Pentagon aims to bring enterprisewide cloud computing capabilities to the Defense Department across all domains and classification levels
2024-09-30 | $874,040,585,085.73 ... 2025-09-30 | $916,648,676,662.05 (National Defense, current FYTD outlays)
The Army announced Palantir has been awarded up to $10 billion over 10 years for a new type of contract vehicle
IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use of Anthropic's technology ... Supply-Chain Risk to National Security ... cannot in good conscience accede to their request [Anthropic held a contract worth up to $200 million]
OpenAI has won a Pentagon contract worth up to $200 million to 'develop prototype frontier AI' ... for both back-office business functions and frontline warfighting operations
artificial intelligence embedded in the Maven Smart System owned by Palantir Technologies Inc. ... relied on satellite imagery that had not been updated in seven years ... killed 123 children at Shajarah Tayyebeh Elementary School in Iran's Minab on 28 February
A Bloomberg investigation published Sept 18 says overreliance on Palantir's Maven Smart System — which uses Anthropic's Claude to semi-autonomously rank targets ... Palantir told Bloomberg there is no evidence its software was at fault and has since added disqualifier flags to Maven.
Inside US Military 'Kill Chain' That Destroyed an Iranian School (headline; body not fetchable — robots.txt)
is already the primary AI operating system for the U.S. military, which has carried out thousands of targeted strikes against Iran over the last three weeks
FY2025: {"total_aggregated_amount":501674746951.4,"results":[{"category":"contracts","aggregated_amount":491788672185.41}... FY2024 contracts 445756409898.65; FY2023 contracts 456947663232.64
In fiscal year 2023, the Department of Defense (DOD) obligated about $456 billion on contracts
CBO estimates that as of August 1, 2026, the armed conflict with Iran has cost DoD approximately $38 billion. ... The United States commenced Operation Epic Fury on February 28, 2026, with air and cruise missile strikes against Iran