FAQs

Frequently Asked Questions

Find answers to common questions about our technology, applications, team, and how we operate to protect schools and support safer communities.

Drones

Apps

Team

Business

Who makes your drones?

We manufacture our own drones and their firmware, because our needs are very specific - agile drones for indoor use, allowing remote piloting from thousands of miles away.

What’s unique about your drones?

Campus Guardian Angel’s drones are American-made and affordable. Additionally, they have a wide range and can be flown from thousands of miles away.

Can your drones be hacked?

We have modeled our security architecture for managing and flying drones on US classified networks. This means that the network the drones are flying on is hardware encrypted and not internet addressable. We also use encryption and authentication on that isolated domain as part of a Defense In Depth strategy. No system is “100% secure”, but hackers would need to break through many defenses to gain access to our drones, similar to accessing Top Secret networks used by the nation’s senior leadership. We have several people on our team with experience designing and operating US Top Secret classified networks.

What effects do your drones bring?

Our drones support two-way communication through an embedded speakerphone, so we can engage verbally with a threat, or communicate to teachers and law enforcement. The drones can also fly through windows, using a front lance to break through. For distraction, our drones support sirens as well as dropping air poppers that make a bang noise. For degradation, our drones support a pepper launcher that can place pepper balls on a shooter, making it difficult for him/her to see. As a last resort, our drones can be used in kinetic energy hits on a confirmed shooter, to greatly degrade or incapacitate him/her. Our goal is to escalate the effects in waves of 3 or 4 drones, keeping the shooter occupied until he/she can be apprehended by law enforcement.

Why don’t you put guns on the drones?

Primarily because lethal effects are not necessary to stop school shooters, and they would dramatically increase the impact of any mistaken actions (over pepper spray). Bullets can pass through walls, injuring or killing bystanders on the other side, whereas all of the effects of our drones are tightly constrained and less lethal. A unique attribute of a drone-based response is just how effective they can be against a person who is lethally armed.
In addition, research shows that many school shooters are suicidal before they are homicidal. In these cases, the use of non-lethal deterrents can actually be more effective, as they deny the attacker the outcome they may be seeking.

Won’t people just shoot the drones?

Drones are like mosquitoes - they are hard to shoot. Even if a shooter does manage to hit one drone, we are sending waves of multiple drones, and whatever time and bullets are being expended shooting at the drones are not being expended injuring or killing children and teachers.

How long can your drones fly?

Typically, around 8 minutes on a single battery charge. This is plenty of time to find and apply effects to a shooter, and we also typically employ multiple waves of drones, so it’s rare that we take a drone all the way down to zero battery.

What happens if it runs out of battery too fast?

The drones’ batteries typically last around 8 minutes, which is longer than the entire length of most active shooter events - the shooting is usually over in several minutes. For false alarms and clearing, we can rotate through the drone fleet on site - taking a drone back to its charging dock and flying another drone with a full battery each time we run it down. Clearing buildings in false alarms with drones partnering with law enforcement officers is typically significantly faster than with law enforcement by themselves, reducing trauma in students and allowing them to get back to studying more quickly and with less disruption.

How do drones deal with shut rooms?

Our drones have a lance on them that can fly through windows that do not have ballistic film on them. If the room has no exterior or interior windows, our drone pilots can team with law enforcement officers or other staff to open a door and allow the drone to fly in and clear the room. We are also working on a ‘drone door’, analogous to a dog door, that can be preinstalled close to the ceiling and will remote open when a drone flies up to it.

Are the drones flying all the time?

No. We only fly the drones when we are alerted that children’s lives are in danger, and when we have confirmed that the threat is credible by our own ops team, based on processes designed with a school district’s police department. Our service is focused on saving lives as part of crisis response to gun threats - it is not designed to stop school fights or figure out who has been kicking the vending machines.

Who flies the drones, is it AI?

No, it is not AI. We have elite human pilots flying the drones, including some of the best drone racing pilots in the world. The drone pilots are under the command of our Duty Commander, who is a former hostage rescue specialist from elite (tier 1) special forces.

Doesn’t this make a drone the single point of failure?

We work hard to avoid single points of failure. We have multiple drones in each of our boxes, and multiple boxes that operate independently of each other, each with two separate network connections into our flight system network. If a drone fails or even if a whole box somehow fails, our goal is to ensure that we can still maintain an effective response.

What if someone shoots the box with the drones in it?

We have antiballistic proofing of the box to protect the drones, and we have multiple boxes to ensure that taking one box out of the picture does not dampen our response. Of course, whenever a shooter is shooting at one of our boxes, he’s spending time and bullets not shooting at people, and we can still pursue him/her from another box once we know that shots have been fired.

What do you do when you find a shooter?

We will typically first deploy a distraction mechanism such as air poppers and tell the shooter to surrender. If he/she does not surrender, we will escalate to deploying pepper rounds from a pepper launcher to the shooter, making it more difficult for the shooter to see or operate effectively. We then again tell the shooter to surrender via a speaker on one of the drones. If the shooter persists in attempting violence, we will then escalate to kinetic energy hits, in which we hit the shooter with drones at speeds ranging from 40mph to 70mph. Our goal is to ensure that the shooter surrenders the ability to cause harm - one way or another.

How do the drones team with law enforcement?

Our drones have a two-way speaker and microphone on them. 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”. We have also found that wing dips and other mechanisms can be effective as we go through clearing processes with officers. The key to teaming with law enforcement is using the drones to clear corners for them and enter rooms before they do.

Don’t you lose the signal in big concrete schools?

Not significantly. We have designed our communications technology to have long range through concrete and other structures (operating at the 900 MHz spectrum), and to avoid spectrum congestion caused by school Wifi (in the 2.4GHz spectrum). In addition to having long distance communications systems, we also support mesh networking, with drone roaming between antennas.

Isn’t there a risk that peak network traffic jams the drones?

Not for us, because our drones operate at 900 MHz, which few other systems operate at, unlike 2.4 GHz, which is the Wifi open band and is often blasted out by school Wifi systems.

Are you watching the kids in the school all the time?

No. Other companies do continuous monitoring for active shooters as part of their service offering, our goal is to activate and begin watching cameras once we are queued.

How do you know when to respond?

We can be queued in different ways, including - via a mobile app, 911 call, silent panic button or gun detection technology.

How do you get access to on-site cameras?

We place a special network box at the school site, behind the firewall. It operates similarly to an Internet Of Things (IOT) home appliance, collecting the sensor data and then forwarding it over to our servers over a secure connection. We downsample the video (make it smaller) so that we can get all the on-site cameras to stream thumb nail videos to our ops team. Note again that we only commence this video forwarding once we are called to investigate a shooting in that moment, and we stop the video streaming once the event is completed.

Is your technology secure?

For our apps, we do use encryption and strong authentication. Access to our drones is deemed more sensitive, so we use additional security mechanisms for communicating with and controlling our drones that are similar to how US classified networks operate.

Do you know where people are?

Yes. GPS is not reliable indoors, as phones cannot see the satellites when indoors, so for this reason we use Ultra Wide Band beacons that have good penetration through concrete and other materials as well as accuracy to just 3 inches - allowing us to determine which side of a wall a person is on.

How do you create the digital twin of the school?

We use a special sensor (LiDAR) and camera to create a digital copy or twin of a school. We then import that data set into our 3D viewing application, built on a video game engine called Unreal.

What is a Common Operating Picture?

A Common Operating Picture (COP) is a shared picture of what’s happening in a given location or area of a map, typically showing friendly actors and threat actors.

Can you integrate with silent panic buttons?

Yes, we can tie into silent panic buttons as a trigger to tell us to go look at a school campus and see if there’s an active shooter event going on there.

Can you integrate with AI gun detection?

Yes, AI gun detection can be another trigger that tells our ops team to go look at a given school campus, to see whether a person has a gun at the campus.

Do the apps help law enforcement?

Yes, we share information with law enforcement, like what clothes a threat is wearing, their rate of fire and competency, as well as what effects we’ve applied to the threat. We can also show the digital twin of the school to law enforcement, and curate which video fees to show. This is similar to how a TV crew for a sports game picks the best camera angles to give a viewer the best idea of what’s going on - often a viewer at home can be better informed in close to real-time than a person just watching from the stands.

Can parents get better updates on an event by using the apps?

Yes, during an event we have a dedicated parent and student liaison who is sat in our ops center, keeping parents appraised as the situation evolves.

How do your apps help teachers?

During an event we also have a dedicated staff liaison who gives teachers and other members of staff real-time updates on what’s happening. No more sitting there in the dark waiting for an update. In addition, teachers can use our app to indicate they have a medical emergency in their class, like a student’s insulin system ceasing to function due to network issues, and our ops team can then prioritize getting medical treatment to the classroom.

Do you record what happens during a response?

Yes, we record everything during a response for compliance purposes. After an event, we work with a school district’s law enforcement team to create an After-Action Report, document any lessons learned and support law enforcement in any public disclosures they make. Appropriately authorized members of law enforcement must sign off any recorded content before it can be released publicly.

Isn’t there a risk that peak network traffic jams the drones?

Not for us, because our drones operate at 900 MHz, which few other systems operate at, unlike 2.4 GHz, which is the Wifi open band and is often blasted out by school Wifi systems.

Who do you have in your response team?

We have a mix of former elite US special forces, former law enforcement and elite drone racing pilots. Together they work to find the threat, confront the threat with drones, and communicate with other stakeholders including law enforcement, school staff, parents and students.

What does your team do when there’s not event happening?

Train and rehearse. Just like an elite special forces unit, we spend a lot of time practicing hostage rescue and active shooter response. Our team also works on the drones and on evolving our apps to improve our situational awareness during events.

How do you deal with multiple events happening at the same time?

At any given time during our covered hours, we have one full team sat in our primary operations center ready to go. That team is leaning very far forwards, so much so that we can make a decision on a course of action in 5 seconds. We then have other full teams on standby. When our primary team is engaged in an event, the second team immediately reconstitutes, and if it becomes busy, the third does the same, so we always have a full team ready to respond in seconds to a new alert. Our current space in South Austin is being built out with four independent rooms that can handle an active shooter alert, we expect to add more as we grow.

How does your team work with on-site security staff?

We often partner with law enforcement (ISD PDs) at a school district to conduct joint exercises and demonstrate the solution before deploying to the district. When we deploy to a site, we work with on-site security and law enforcement to plan the best locations to place our drones, how many boxes are required, and to scan the campus in order to create the digital twin and connect all the sensor feeds. The deployment includes determining procedures for different types of events, and the policies for when we respond - our Concept of Operations (CONOPS). We conduct joint training and tests with on-site security and law enforcement at various intervals to ensure we will operate together successfully in a real event.

Ultimately, our goal is to reduce the risk to life to security staff, and avoid putting security staff in situations in which they can make a mistake - e.g. target acquisition while clearing. This is true for police offices, SROs, armed teachers, school guardians and anyone else appropriately authorized by the school or local authorities as part of a response.

What happens if you can’t get in touch with law enforcement?

If we see a shooter on a video feed, or clear evidence of a shooter (e.g. people running), we are going to respond immediately and independently. This is agreed up front as part of the joint Concept of Operations (CONOPS). Every second matters in an active shooter response, so we do not wait for permission or confirmation if we are ourselves able to confirm the presence of a credible threat.

What happens when law enforcement arrives on scene?

Once law enforcement arrives on the scene, we hand off command and control to law enforcement and support them as a service while they continue the response. We pass situational awareness of what we’re seeing - before, during and after the hand off. We also team our pilots with law enforcement, going ahead of law enforcement officers and other security personnel as they clear corridors and rooms. Our drones have a speaker and microphone, so our central ops team can talk to law enforcement officers like another member of the team - making their roles easier and reducing risk.

What happens after an event?

We store all video footage from an event response, including security camera footage we had access to, drone camera footage, chat messages, voice communications - everything. We make this available to law enforcement and/or the FBI, and participate in after action reports. Our role is supporting local authorities in their evaluation of the response, any requests for information must be routed through the local authorities with which we collaborate.

How did you get started doing this?

Our founder Justin Marston watched how drones were incredibly effective against infantry soldiers in Ukraine, even though the drones do not have guns. One Ukrainian special forces operator told us that in 600 missions, the drone had only got shot once, even though the targeted soldiers could hear the drone coming and knew what to expect. It’s similar to trying to shoot a mosquito. The challenge in school shootings is all about response time - every second matters and every delay can increase loss of life. Justin realized that if the drones could be low enough cost and flown remotely, they could be put everywhere like fire sprinkler systems, and then operated by a centralized elite team.

Justin reached out to Bill King in November 2023, who had recently retired from the SEAL teams, and Bill thought the model could work. We then scheduled a technology demonstration at the Rosedale School Active Shooter Training Site in Austin, and recruited some of the best drone pilots in the country to fly against former elite special forces threat actors. The technology demonstration was successful, and that that led to the company being formed.

Who are your founders?

Justin Marston is a serial technology entrepreneur in Austin, having previously started four other investor-backed technology companies in national and cyber security as well as consumer and business software (SaaS). Bill King is a Navy SEAL veteran, having spent 32 years in the SEAL teams, he has been involved in numerous operations around the world including hostage rescue operations, and kinetic strike operations with Predator drones.

How much does it cost?

For schools and educational institutions on our education pricing, a box of six drones with all networking and response effects costs $15,000. A school may need between 3 and 15 (or more) of these boxes depending on the campus size - some high schools are the size of small colleges or universities. Our monthly cost for the managed service is $4 per student per month.

Can it help with false alarms?

Yes. False alarms cost school districts millions of dollars each year and often take hours to clear. Our central team having a fused sensor picture (video cameras, other sensors as deployed) of what’s happening in the school reduces the pressure during room clearing operations. Also, our drones can clear more quickly and more safely than requiring armed officers brandishing guns to move through every room of the school. Our goals are to work with on-site law enforcement to clear the alarm as fast as possible, minimizing the risk of collateral damage and trauma projected on children and staff during the lockdown. Having access to real-time information can reduce the unknowns for teachers and avoid mistaken identity - such as thinking the sound of officers clearing toilet stalls is in fact gunfire.

How do teachers feel about your solution?

We have found that teachers are supportive of our service for several reasons:

Our service ensures teachers have a better understanding of what’s happening during events - both false alarms and real events.
Our goal is to protect teachers and students during an event, getting there faster than law enforcement can to reduce risk to life.
Our presence can reduce the pressure on teachers to be the first response and carry guns.
If a teacher does wish to carry a gun, we can be his or her wingman - we make entry, we reduce the risk of the teacher getting shot or making a bad targeting decision and shooting a child by accident.
Our drone boxes are unobtrusive on the ceiling in larger rooms, and similar to sprinkler systems, blend into the background over time. We have been told that this feels less like militarization of schools than having multiple law enforcement officers patrolling with assault weapons.

Do police officers want to work with drones?

Yes every school police officer we have spoken to is supportive of our service:

We make the entry to rooms during clearing, reducing the risk of a law enforcement officer getting shot.
We conduct target evaluation and apply initial effects, reducing the risk of a law enforcement officer making a mistaken targeting decision while under duress.
We provide better information to law enforcement officers in real-time, giving them intelligence on the shooter’s location, appearance, rate of fire, weapons, etc.
We do not believe any law enforcement officer should be carrying out hostage rescue alone, and we act as their elite, on-demand wingman for the most stressful time in a law enforcement officer’s career.

Can schools get grant funding for your service?

Yes. We are working with the Texas Legislature to provide grant funding for our service, we are working with the Department of Justice (DoJ) under the new Administration to ensure that drone-based services are eligible for grant funding, and we have found that some family offices are interested in funding our service for local schools.

What hours do you operate the service?

We are launching our service operating from 7AM to 5PM US Central time, Monday to Friday. We expect to broaden to 24 by 7 operations by the end of 2025.

What is your relationship with Mithril Defense?

Campus Guardian Angel is a brand in the Mithril Defense family. Mithril Defense services a range of industries and customer types.

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