Several US schools to install pepper-spraying drones to respond to school shootings

Several schools across the US are set to install pepper-spraying drones as part of a new effort to respond to school shooting attacks – a Ukraine war-inspired approach that is bound to put off those who would prefer leaders focus on preventing the violence in the first place.

Campus Guardian Angel of Austin, Texas, which describes itself as a response capability company, is providing the drones in question to multiple schools across the country, including at least four schools in Georgia, three in Florida and one in Colorado.

According to the company, which manufactures its own aircraft and firmware, the drones launch into action after an alert that a school is under attack and once its response team has confirmed the threat is credible.

They can be flown from thousands of miles away and support two-way communication through an embedded speakerphone, allowing the company’s response team to “engage verbally with a threat, or communicate to teachers and school staff”, Campus Guardian Angel’s website stated.

“This allows our team in our ops center to communicate to law enforcement officers verbally with messages such as ‘follow me and I’ll take you to the suspect’ or ‘open the door and we’ll go in to clear the room and tell you what we see,’” the company said.

The drones can remain airborne for around eight minutes on a single battery charge and operate at 900 MHz. According to the company, they can fly through windows that are not coated with ballistic film, using a front lance to break through. They are also equipped with sirens and can drop air poppers that create a loud bang.

Additionally, the drones carry a pepper launcher capable of firing pepper balls at a shooter and can also be used to deliver kinetic energy strikes against a confirmed attacker in an attempt to “greatly degrade or incapacitate” them.

The company said its goal is to “escalate the effects in waves of 3 or 4 drones, keeping the shooter occupied until he/she can be apprehended by authorized responders”.

Speaking to the Washington Post in an article published on Tuesday, the company’s co-founder Bill King, a former senior enlisted leader for Navy Seal teams with 32 years of experience, said: “Once I get the drones on you, you just can’t escape them.”

The company’s tactical operations director, Khristof Oborski, a former team leader with the Austin police department’s Special Weapons and Tactics (Swat) unit, added in another interview that the concept was inspired by the use of small drones on the battlefields in Ukraine after Russia invaded it in February 2022.

Speaking to Barron’s magazine, Oborski said King had observed the effectiveness of the technology during the war in Ukraine.

“He started thinking about how can you introduce this type of system to be able to combat a growing problem in the United States – with school shootings,” Oborski said.

The Georgia schools set to pilot the drone program include Coffee county high school in Douglas; Gainesville high school in Gainesville; River Ridge high school in Woodstock; and Statesboro high school in Statesboro. The state’s legislature included $550,000 in its annual budget to fund the program.

In Florida, Deltona high school in Volusia county is set to install 39 drones for the upcoming school year. Other schools expected to launch the program include Amos P Godby high school in Leon county and Boyd H Anderson high school in Broward county.

John Adams Academy in Douglas county, Colorado, is also preparing to introduce the technology. Speaking to Denver7, Sarah Kiesewetter, the John Adams Academy head, said: “We might be the first school in Colorado looking at [drone technology] but we certainly won’t be the last,” Axios reported.

However, not everyone is convinced the drones are the right approach.

That includes Tony Montalto, whose 14-year-old daughter Gina Montalto was among the 17 people killed in the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida. He told WPTV: “These drones aren’t patrolling – they just pop up when needed. So that’s part of the problem. We need to focus on the prevention piece rather than the reaction piece.”

Data published by the Washington Post in September show more than 398,000 students have experienced gun violence at school since the 1999 Columbine high school shooting in Colorado that killed 14 people.