Second Bend Labs 正式启用
一座占地40万英亩的新型测试与训练场旨在将部队与防务公司聚集在一起，以便他们能以现代战争的速度进行创新。上周五，总部位于佐治亚州的 Second Bend Labs 宣布该设施在穆迪空军基地附近正式开放。
该设施旨在吸引两个通常分离的群体：需要针对能力强劲的对手测试无人机及反无人机设备的士兵，以及需要验证产品有效性的无人机初创公司。这需要一种全新的军事试验场管理模式：一个平民易于进入（不同于封闭的军事基地）、且允许进行军事级无人机测试（不同于普通的私人土地）的场所。
创建一个能让初创公司在中等高度（如 A-10 攻击机的飞行高度）放飞无人机并让士兵对其射击的场所，看似显而易见，实则极具挑战性。美国国防部副部长史蒂夫·费恩伯格曾指出，这是现代化的主要障碍。目前，部分冲突地区已因形势所迫解决了这一问题，使其成为无人机与反无人机战争的核心测试点。
Second Bend Labs 无人与自主系统总裁、前空军战斗管制员 Stu Booker 表示：“你需要在反映实战任务环境的现实条件下进行训练。我们的客户无论是在测试新技术、开发新战术还是强化现有技能，都在模拟真实战斗复杂性的环境中进行。”该场地提供多样化地形和五英里的河岸水域，用于测试陆上和海上无人机。它位于穆迪空军基地的 Corsair South 区域内。
Second Bend Labs
By Patrick Tucker
Science & Technology Editor
April 17, 2026 06:00 AM ET
Industry
Drones
A new, 400,000-acre testing and training facility aims to bring troops and defense firms together so they can innovate at the speed of modern warfare.On Friday, Georgia-based Second Bend Labs announced the public opening of the facility near Moody Air Force Base. It’s designed to appeal to two usually separate groups whose challenges can only be solved together. Soldiers need to test drones and counter-drone equipment against a competent adversary, and drone startups need to see if their stuff works. That requires a new approach to the military test range: a site that civilians can easily access, unlike a military base, and that allows military drone testing, unlike a regular expanse of private acreage.Simply creating a place where a young company can fly medium-sized drones at the altitude of an A-10 Warthog and have soldiers shoot at it might seem obvious. It isn’t. It’s a problem that Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg discussed in his confirmation hearing as a major obstacle to modernization, and that Government Accountability Office and the Pentagon’s acquisition undersecretary have called burdensome to innovators. It’s also a problem that Ukraine has solved out of necessity, making the wartorn country a central testing site for drone and counter-drone warfare.“You need to train the way you fight in realistic mission environments,” said Stu Booker, a former Air Force combat controller who is now Second Bend’s president of unmanned and autonomous systems. “Our clients, whether they are testing new technology, developing new tactics, or sharpening existing skills, are doing it in conditions that reflect the complexity of the environments they will actually fight in.”The site offers diverse terrain and five miles of riverfront water for testing land and sea drones. It sits within Moody’s Corsair South Military Operations Area, which enables testing of low-altitude air support craft like the A-10 Warthog but also, increasingly, small and medium drones. The facility has a range complex designed to Defense Department specifications, a 3,000-square-foot hangar, and an adjacent 20-foot launch pad. It also has “personnel in private guest home lodging, chef-supported meals, a 2,000-square-foot gym, and 3,000 square feet of team bonding spaces,” according to a press release for the lab. The idea is to create something akin to a modern co-working space or even a tech accelerator, allowing startups to collaborate and share gear. Think back to the Silicon Valley campuses of Google, Facebook (before Meta), and Twitter (before X) in the 2000s. One thing the company is still working on is getting changes or waivers to local and federal regulations that limit its ability to replicate jamming and other electromagnetic warfare effects—the biggest factor driving evolution on the Ukrainian battlefield
