Several US schools to deploy pepper spray-equipped drones to stop shooters

Several schools in three US states will launch the new academic year with a new security measure: drones equipped with pepper spray, strobe lights and other features that their manufacturer says can be used against an active shooter within seconds, CBS News writes.

The schools, located in Colorado, Florida and Georgia, will be the first to add drones from Mithril Defense, which has been developing and testing whether the devices can work alongside law enforcement to more effectively stop school shooters than a police response alone.

The drones zoom through school hallways at speeds of up to 50 miles per hour, guided by pilots at Mithril’s Austin, Texas, headquarters, with the goal of locating an active shooter within 15 seconds, Mithril CEO Justin Marston told CBS News.

The drones are designed to use a combination of sirens, strobe lights and pepper gel to overwhelm the assailant. As a last resort, the drones can ram the shooter at 60 miles per hour, Marston added.

American schools now spend about $4 billion annually on physically hardening their facilities by adding technology such as metal detectors and surveillance cameras, according to the Learning Policy Institute, an education research group.

School shootings in the US reached a peak of 352 incidents in 2023 before easing during the past two years, according to the K-12 School Shooting Database. In the 1970s and 1980s, there were typically fewer than 30 school shootings per year, the group’s data shows.