Blackwater Training Center, North Carolina

The Blackwater Training Center, south of Moyock, is a large and diverse training site for private military and security forces. Now officially called the United States Training Center, it opened as the company’s primary location in 1998, on 7,000 acres, next to the Great Dismal Swamp (Blackwater is a reference to the aqueous color of the Swamp). Blackwater was founded by in 1997, and was renamed Academi in 2009. It provides security forces for many parts of the federal government, including the State Department and CIA. In 2014, Academi merged with a competitor, Triple Canopy, and was acquired by the Constellis Group, a diversified security company with more than 20,000 employees. The training center, one of the largest and most sophisticated private security training sites in the country, is used by other companies, agencies, and law enforcement entities too, and is now one of a few sites operated by the company.