2026年7月29日 / 美国东部时间上午10:06 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻
美国三个州的多所学校将在新学年启用一项全新安保措施：配备胡椒喷雾、频闪灯及其他功能的无人机，其制造商称该设备可在数秒内应对活跃枪击者。
这些位于科罗拉多州、佛罗里达州和佐治亚州的学校，将成为首批引入米斯里尔防务公司（Mithril Defense）无人机的试点。该公司一直在研发并测试这类设备能否与执法部门配合，比单独依靠警方响应更有效地阻止校园枪击者。
米斯里尔首席执行官贾斯汀·马斯顿告诉哥伦比亚广播公司新闻，这种无人机可在得克萨斯州奥斯汀总部的飞行员操控下，以最高每小时50英里的速度穿梭于学校走廊，目标是在15秒内定位活跃枪击者。无人机设计为结合使用警报器、频闪灯和胡椒凝胶来制服袭击者。马斯顿补充道，作为最后手段，无人机还能以每小时60英里的速度冲撞枪击者。
远程操作员操控米斯里尔防务公司的“校园守护天使”无人机，该公司称其可威慑活跃枪击者。米斯里尔防务公司
这类无人机是美国数千所K-12学校安保服务业务扩张的一部分，应对校园枪击灾害问题。根据教育研究机构学习政策研究所的数据，美国学校如今每年约花费40亿美元用于升级校园实体安保，加装金属探测器和监控摄像头等技术设备。
“这是我们首批部署无人机的学校，”马斯顿在谈及这三个州采用该公司无人机的学校时表示，“我们认为每所学校都应该配备某种枪击者压制系统，五年后，你不会愿意送孩子去没有这类系统的学校。”
根据K-12校园枪击数据库的数据，校园枪击事件在2023年达到352起的峰值，之后两年有所回落。该组织的数据显示，在20世纪70年代和80年代，每年校园枪击事件通常不足30起。
马斯顿称，这些无人机存放于学校内的安全箱中，可在数秒内部署——这一特性可能至关重要，因为大多数校园枪击事件会在两到三分钟内结束。无人机还能先于警察进入房间，他表示这可以挽救生命，因为数据显示约有一半的大规模枪击事件中会有警察中弹。
“警察永远不该冒着生命危险去做无人机可以完成的任务，因为我们不在乎无人机是否会被击中，它不过是一块塑料而已，”马斯顿说，“我们可以派出下一架无人机继续行动，但警察的生命是不可替代的。”
解决根源问题
一些专家表示，解决暴力根源问题比使用科技手段更有效，这类科技可能会适得其反，让学生感到更不安全或加剧他们的焦虑情绪。
“绝大多数研究表明，保障学生在校安全的最佳方式，不仅要关注学生的人身安全，还要确保他们的心理安全感，”学习政策研究所高级研究员詹妮弗·德帕奥利在4月的一篇博客文章中写道。
她补充道，这些措施包括提供心理健康支持、建立师生间的信任关系以及营造积极的校园环境。
马斯顿赞成解决校园枪击背后的根源问题，但他同时表示，制定应对此类事件的有效方案也至关重要，并将该问题比作校园火灾。
“我们应该教导孩子不该纵火……但我不会送孩子去没有安装自动喷水灭火系统的学校，”马斯顿告诉哥伦比亚广播公司新闻，“两者并不矛盾。”
成本问题
马斯顿表示，佐治亚州的五个学区和佛罗里达州的三个学区将引入米斯里尔的这款名为“校园守护天使”的无人机，相关费用由各州承担。他称，对于一所面积8万平方英尺的学校，年成本约为2万美元，比雇佣一名保安的费用还要低。
在科罗拉多州测试该无人机的是一所名为约翰·亚当斯学院的公立特许学校，该县原本为该项目提供20万美元的拨款，之后撤回了资金，该校因此转而使用私人资助。科罗拉多州的一些家长反对这套系统，质疑最终是否会有儿童受伤。
“如果无人机喷射这些喷雾伤到孩子怎么办？”家长詹妮弗·艾弗森本月早些时候告诉科罗拉多州哥伦比亚广播公司，她指的是胡椒喷雾，“这带来了太多伦理和法律问题，我认为这是个非常糟糕的主意。”
至少还有一个州正在研究在学校使用无人机，路易斯安那州最近通过了一项法律，将为四所学校的无人机试点项目提供资金。
“这些无人机的主要卖点是，它们能够为执法部门提供此前无法获取区域的实时画面，并部署威慑手段，比如频闪灯和胡椒喷雾，”专注于路易斯安那州事务的智库鹈鹕公共政策研究所表示。
马斯顿称，展示无人机的性能通常能让人们接受这款产品。“每个人都会说‘展示给我看’，而当我们展示后，人们的反应就好像我们发明了电力一样。”
Schools are testing pepper-spraying, strobe-flashing drones to stop shooters
July 29, 2026 / 10:06 AM EDT / CBS News
Several schools in three 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.
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.
Remote operators pilot Mithril Defense’s Campus Guardian Angel drones, which the company says can deter active shooters. Mithril Defense
The drones are part of the growing business of providing security services to the nation’s thousands of K-12 schools amid the scourge of school shootings. 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.
“These are the first schools we’re deploying into now,” Marston said of the schools in the three states adopting the company’s drones. “We think every school should have some kind of active-shooter suppression system, and five years from now, you wouldn’t send your kids to a school that doesn’t have one.”
School shootings 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.
The drones, which are housed in secure boxes inside the schools, can be deployed within seconds — a potentially critical feature given that most school shootings are over within two to three minutes, Marston said. The drones can also enter rooms ahead of police officers, which he said could save lives, given that data shows officers are shot in about half of mass shootings.
“An officer should never have to risk their life doing something that a drone can do, because we don’t care if the drone gets shot. It’s a lump of plastic,” Marston said. “We just jump in with the next one. But an officer’s life is irreplaceable.”
Addressing root causes
Some experts say that dealing with the root causes of violence is a more effective response than using tech that may backfire by making students feel less safe or fueling their anxiety.
“Overwhelmingly, research indicates that the best way to keep students safe in schools is not just to attend to students’ physical safety, but to ensure their psychological sense of safety as well,” Jennifer DePaoli, senior researcher at the Learning Policy Institute, wrote in an April blog post.
These approaches include mental health support, building trusting relationships between teachers and students, and creating positive school environments, she added.
Marston favors addressing the factors behind school shootings. But he said that developing effective approaches to such incidents is also essential, comparing the issue to dealing with school fires.
“We should teach kids that they shouldn’t start fires … but I wouldn’t send my kids to a school that didn’t have a sprinkler system,” Marston told CBS News. “They aren’t mutually exclusive.”
What it costs
The five school districts in Georgia and three in Florida that are adding Mithril’s drones, called the Campus Guardian Angel, are being funded by the states, Marston said. The cost is about $20,000 a year for an 80,000-square-foot school, or less than hiring a security officer, he said.
The Colorado school testing Mithril’s drone, a public charter school called the John Adams Academy, is tapping private funding after the county backed away from providing $200,000 for the program. Some parents in Colorado objected to the system, raising questions about whether children could ultimately get hurt.
“What about a drone spewing these pellets and hurting a kid?” parent Jennifer Iversen told CBS Colorado earlier this month, referring to the pepper spray. “It brings in so many ethical and legal issues that I just think it’s a really bad idea.”
At least one other state is examining the use of drones in schools, with Louisiana recently passing a law that would fund a drone pilot program in four schools.
“The primary selling point for these drones is their ability to offer live footage to law enforcement from areas where it previously would not have been available and to deploy deterrents, like strobe lights and pepper spray,” said the Pelican Institute for Public Policy, a think tank focused on Louisiana.
Marston said demonstrations of the drones’ capabilities typically sell people on the product. “Everybody sort of says, ‘Show me,’ and then when we show it, it’s kind of like we invented electricity.”