Company Says Its Drones Can Stop School Shooters

In Ukraine, drones have transformed warfare. A Texas-based company says the unmanned aircraft could also radically alter the response to school shootings. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has approved a trial of the Campus Guardian Angel system in three school districts, Newsweek reports. The company maintains that the drones, stored in secure boxes on campus and remotely operated by a team in Texas, can be deployed within 5 seconds of an alarm being activated. They can provide first responders with live video feeds and, if necessary, fire nonlethal rounds at an attacker.

"In a school shooting most of the death happens in the first 120 seconds so it's really about how quickly can you get there to engage the shooter before they've had the chance to kill a whole bunch of children," company founder and CEO Justin Marston says, per CBS News. He compares the defense system to a sprinkler system. "We've got the drones in charging boxes, ready to go, and we can fly them on an encrypted channel across the internet," he tells Newsweek. "It's a bit like that movie The Matrix, where the agent can jump into the nearest person and immediately be good to go. We're a little bit like that—but we're the good guys."

"If somebody comes into the school with a gun, our pilots from our central ops center can immediately start flying them and our goal is to respond in 5 seconds, be on them in 15 seconds, and then take out that shooter in 60 seconds," Marston says. He says the system, which costs around $1,000 a month for a school of 500 students, is being installed in four school districts and one university in Texas. DeSantis has approved $557,000 in funding for the pilot program in Florida.