FBI Opens 22,000-Square-Foot Fake Town to Train Cybersecurity Agents

Quick Facts

• The FBI’s Kinetic Cyber Range opened in February 2025 and has trained more than 1,400 students from federal and local agencies
• The 22,000-square-foot facility features a complete fake town with houses, businesses, and a data center running 200 physical servers
• US cybercrime losses hit a record $20.9 billion in 2025, jumping 26% from $16.6 billion in 2024

The FBI built a fake town in Huntsville, Alabama, to train agents how to respond to cyberattacks. The Kinetic Cyber Range spans 22,000 square feet and includes fully furnished houses, a hotel, gas station, grocery store, courthouse, hospital, and power company.

The facility features roads, traffic lights, and a data center with more than 200 physical servers running Windows and Linux systems. Each building contains functioning networks and devices designed to behave like real-world environments.

“This is about as real as it’s going to get before people go out in the field,” said Dave Beachboard, the range’s program manager. “In the past, you never left the classroom. Everything was presented to you at your desk.”

The training facility can recreate high-stress scenarios such as ransomware attacks on hospitals. Agents practice both technical responses and managing affected people during crises. Trainees work through practical cybercrime scenarios, from deciding which connected devices to seize in homes to investigating corporate networks.

The range opened as US cybercrime reached unprecedented levels. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center received more than 1 million complaints for the first time in 2025. Ransomware appeared in 44% of all data breaches in 2025, up from 32% the previous year.

Healthcare remains the top target for cybercriminals among US critical infrastructure sectors. The FBI recorded 460 ransomware attacks on healthcare organizations in 2025 alone.

“The systems that we have running in these facilities are just as real as the facade on the outside,” Beachboard said. “When they start diving into the network, they’re going to see Active Directory, email, firewalls—everything that’s typical.”

The facility also trains investigators in digital forensics, teaching them to crack encrypted devices for criminal investigations. However, these tools exploit vulnerabilities that are never disclosed to device makers like Apple or Google.

FBI personnel emphasized the human element of cybercrime investigations. “Cyber is not just technical. It’s also practicing those soft skills, the dealing with people,” an FBI official said.

The training philosophy encourages learning from mistakes. “We want them to make the mistakes in the Kinetic Cyber Range,” officials said. “That’s when we can slap their hands and say, ‘This is a learning opportunity.'”

Read more: The FBI built a small town to simulate cyberattacks