Budget Analysis: Army Programs Leveraging Cloud, FY 2021-2023

Every Spring, GovWin’s Federal Market Analysis (FMA) team takes a detailed look at the Department of Defense’s (DOD) Procurement and Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation (RDT&E) budget requests for the fiscal year to come. The late release of the budget this year delayed that process up to this point.

FMA identifies programs using keywords for certain technologies, including cloud computing, big data analytics, cybersecurity/weaponry, and others. FMA’s analysis of the U.S. Army’s fiscal 2023 Procurement and RDT&E budget requests is now complete, which allows us to bring some of the numbers in this earlier post up to date. Analysis of the rest of DOD’s budget is still underway.

The Army data reveals an intent to spend $906M on programs that use or prepare for the use of cloud technology in one way or another. This total is up from the $884M enacted in FY 2022.

Identifying the specific cloud spend in each program is impossible due to the vague way that the DOD reports budget request data. Readers should keep in mind, therefore, that the numbers presented here are the requested budgets for programs that plan to use cloud technology for a specific purpose (e.g., storage, testing, or delivering a capability, etc.). The numbers presented here should not be considered the Army’s entire cloud budget for FY 2023. They are best thought of as a signpost indicating how and where Army program offices intend to use cloud and the potential amounts they could spend on it.

Cloud-Related Budgets by Budget Account and Program

The chart below shows the Army’s cloud-related budgets separated by Procurement and RDT&E accounts.

Concerning Procurement, the data shows that after rising to a high of $197M in FY 2022, the Army’s request for cloud-related programs fell to $167M in FY 2023. The drop can be attributed to small reductions in the budgets of several programs, although a more significant decline of $14M in the funding requested for Personnel Automation Systems also contributed.

As for RDT&E, the requested budgets continue to rise steadily, driven by increases across a large number of programs. The biggest of these is the High Performance Computing Modernization Program, which will see and additional $70M.

Several programs also plan to leverage cloud capabilities for the first time in FY 2023. These programs did not list the technology in the past:

• Combat Vehicle Improvement Programs - $50M
• Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Technologies - $12M
• Biometric Enabling Capability - $11M

Finally, the table below shows the largest programs with a cloud-related component by requested FY 2023 budget. The numbers for FY 2021 and FY 2022 funding have been included for comparison.

Summing up, the Army’s use of cloud capabilities continues to grow across its programs due to both the intelligent approach adopted by leadership and increasing comfort with the security and viability of the technology.