FBI Built a 22,000-Sq-Ft Replica Town to Train Cyber Investigators

1,400 law enforcement personnel have walked through the doors of the FBI's 22,000-square-foot replica town since February 2025 — a purpose-built training ground on the agency's Huntsville, Alabama campus that simulates real-world cyberattacks with actual hardware, networks, and high-stakes scenarios.

That number comes from the FBI's own write-up about the Kinetic Cyber Range, and it puts the scale of this effort in perspective. The Bureau's 2025 Internet Crime Report logged over a million complaints and a record $20.9 billion in U.S. cybercrime losses — a 26% jump over the prior year. This facility isn't a classroom exercise; it's a fully functional small town wired with consumer and enterprise tech that behaves exactly as it would under attack.

Houses, Hospitals, and a 200-Server Data Center

The range includes fully furnished houses, a hotel, a gas station, a grocery mart, a courthouse, a hospital, and a power company — all on streets with working traffic lights. Every building is stocked with devices and systems that mimic a real U.S. community, but the facility is isolated so no simulated attack can escape.

Dave Beachboard, the range's program manager, describes the data center in refreshingly blunt terms: "They're cold, they're cramped, they're noisy, they're dark, they're miserable." That data center holds more than 200 physical servers — some Windows, some Linux — reflecting the hybrid environments investigators encounter when serving a warrant or responding to a breach.

Ransomware Drills with Real Consequences

Simulating a ransomware attack on the hospital or power company forces trainees to make the kind of rapid, high-pressure decisions that separate good cyber response from catastrophic failure. The FBI uses this range to teach investigators how to think about cascading real-world harm when systems go dark, not just technical containment.

Digital forensics training is another core use case. Trainees learn to crack the defenses of encrypted modern devices — phones, laptops, anything likely to hold evidence — by exploiting vulnerabilities that police never disclose to Apple or Google. That's a deliberately controversial tool in the investigator's kit, and the range gives them a controlled environment to practice before they do it on a live target.

The Kinetic Cyber Range represents a shift from tabletop exercises to hands-on, infrastructure-level simulation. With cybercrime losses accelerating and ransomware hitting critical infrastructure, the FBI is making sure its people have touched the hardware and lived through the chaos before they face it for real.

Source: The FBI built its own replica small town to simulate real-world cyberattacks
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