Pepper-spray drone offered to South African mines for strike control

Desert Wolf, maker of Skunk Riot Control Copter, says aim is to 'prevent another Marikana' – the strike when 34 workers killed        

David Smith in Johannesburg    

The Guardian, Friday 20 June 2014

A South African company has built a drone designed to shower pepper spray on unruly crowds and says it has begun supplying units to an international mining company.
Desert Wolf claims it wants to help in "preventing another Marikana" – a reference to a protest in August 2012 at which 34 striking mineworkers were shot and killed during clashes with the police.
But the "Skunk Riot Control Copter" was condemned by labour activists as "absolutely outrageous" and compared with deadly US military drones in Pakistan.
Desert Wolf is marketing the 500,000 rand (£27,400) machine, unveiled at a recent trade show, as "designed to control unruly crowds without endangering the lives of the protesters or the security staff".
It says the Skunk boastscan eight electric motors with 16-inch propellors, lifting 45kg and carrying 4,000 pepper-spray paintballs, plastic balls or other "non-lethal" ammunition. The device is equipped with four barrels firing up to 20 balls per second each, which could equate to 80 pepper balls per second "stopping any crowd in its tracks".

READ MORE......