This year, schools in at least three U.S. states will be equipped with drones that can zoom down hallways, break windows, and pepper-spray active shooters if teachers report a threat. At least nine schools — three in Florida, five in Georgia and one in Colorado — will have storage boxes for the non-lethal plastic drones made by Austin, Texas-based Mithril Defense. These drones, which can be activated by teachers, are capable of reaching an attacker in 15 seconds. The planes are designed to distract their targets by flashing strobe lights, blaring sirens, spraying them with pepper gel, or ramming them at 60 mph.
“Once I target you with the drones, you can’t escape them,” said Bill King, a former Navy Seal and co-founder of Mithril Defense. These programs continue a surge in spending on high-tech security on college campuses, a multibillion-dollar industry fueled by the threat of school shootings. Almost 400,000 students have suffered armed violence at school since the attackue 1999 at Columbine High School in Colorado, according to a record of Washington Postwhich has documented 435 shootings during that period.
Deltona public high school, located north of Orlando, Florida, with approximately 1,700 students, became the first school to install the system at the end of last school year. Two other Florida schools — Boyd H. Anderson High School, near Fort Lauderdale, and Godby High School, in Tallahassee — were also selected by the state to complete the $557,000 pilot program promoted by state legislators. Five Georgia schools will also test drone systems after state lawmakers approved a roughly $500,000 pilot program with Mithril Defense. The state has not yet confirmed participating schools, but Mithril indicated the systems will be operational during the next school year.
Georgia state Rep. Matt Dubnik (R), chairman of the House education subcommittee, said the technology could protect schools that do not have school safety officers on site. He added that the pilot program will be pwill rob schools with and without agents. “I believe in technology,” he said.or Dubnik, adding that hundreds of other state legislators agreed when they voted to approve the budget, which included funding for the program. In Colorado, John Adams Academy, a public charter school in Sterling Ranch for students in kindergarten through 12th grade, will self-fund a drone program for its inaugural year.
Teachers will have an application or panic buttons in the classroom to request the drones. Mithril Defense professional pilots will be able to control them remotely. Drones have been tested in simulations, but never in a firefight. Justin Marston, founder and CEO of Mithril, said the massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 students and two teachers were killed in 2022 while law enforcement waited more than an hour to enter the classroom, inspired the project. When he learned that the military and Ukrainian forces were using cheap drones to attack each other, Marston said he thought a non-lethal version could have saved lives in Uvalde.
“The first 120 seconds are incredibly important, because that’s when most of the shooting happens,” Marston said. Although drones could be activated at any time, they are designed specifically for potentially lethal situations. According to Marston, drones would not intervene in a schoolyard fight. However, if one of the students pulled out a knife, they could do it. Faced with the threat of campus shootings, schools acrossThe country has adopted various defense technologiesfrom cameras with artificial intelligence to weapons detectors. However, some believe that military-grade equipment, such as Mithril drones, should not be present in schools full of children.
For years, school safety consultants have cast doubt on high-tech solutions to school shootings, arguing that low-tech measures, such as simply locking exterior doors, are just as effective. Curtis Lavarello, director of the School Safety Defense Council, a security consultancy, expressed concern that Mithril’s drones could mistakenly target a fleeing student instead of an attacker. He also feared that remote pilots, in a split-second decision, would mistake a law enforcement officer for an attacker, especially if teachers triggered a false alarm. “It’s almost like video games and school safety collide,” Lavarello said.
“I have serious reservations about the use of drones in schools.” Mithril is not the first company to try to install riot drones in schools. In 2022, Axon Enterprise halted development of drones equipped with Tasers following the mass resignation of its ethics committee, which feared the devices could stun innocent students or be misused by hackers. Jaclyn Corin, 2018 school shooting survivor Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which left 17 dead, said she would prefer that authorities prioritize policies that help prevent gun violence rather than responding to it.
The first 120 seconds are incredibly important, because that’s when most of the shooting takes place.
“School districts have limited budgets and restricted care resources,” said Corin, executive director and co-founder of March for Our Lives, a youth organization that advocates for strict gun control. “If we devote significant resources to technologies designed to respond after a shooting begins, we must ask ourselves what we are not investing in instead.”
Nicole Lawrence said she learned from a local news outlet that her son’s high school, located in the Atlanta area, had been contacted by the state of Georgia to host the Mithril drones this year (district officials said they have no specific plans yet for installing the devices). Lawrence expressed doubts about the effectiveness of drones, But she is willing to give them a chance. “I’ve spent $100,000 on worse things,” Lawrence said.
Florida plans to review the number of violent incidents in schools and measure response times to threats. The state will also survey parents, students and staff to determine if they feel safer with pepper spray and window breaking devices. While the drones remained at Deltona High School this summer, awaiting their first action, the state approved another $564,000 for the next school year.