When The Mission Chooses You

There is a difference between pursuing a mission and being chosen by one. I have spent 33 years pursuing this one as a United States Marine, as a police detective corporal, as a researcher, as a testifier before the U.S. Senate and Congress, as a media contributor on every major national and international outlet, and as the architect of the only active shooter prevention framework adopted by both the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense. I have never needed a room full of credentials to validate the work. The work validates itself every time a community uses the PRO Model(TM) and something that could have happened does not.

But there are moments in this work where the mission reaches back. Where the people responsible for the safety of this country at its highest levels look at what the Active Shooter Prevention Project has built and say, quietly and without ceremony, that it is exactly what they were looking for. September 18, 2024, at the Blue Grass Army Depot in Richmond, Kentucky, was one of those moments.

I arrived at that depot as a distinguished guest; my place card read: Chris Grollnek, Distinguished Guest, Managing Partner, Active Shooter Prevention Project. That designation at a United States Army installation handling some of the most sensitive materials in America is not ceremonial. It is earned. And when Drew Walter gave me his personal challenge coin from the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Matters before I left, there was nothing more that needed to be said about whether this work belongs at the highest levels of American national security.

It does. It always has. And the people who understand what is at stake in this country have always found their way to that conclusion.

Who Is Drew Walter

Drew Walter has spent his career at the intersection of national security policy and the hard science of keeping America’s most sensitive assets protected. He currently serves as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Matters and Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Deterrence, Chemical, and Biological Defense Policy and Programs a role that places him among the most consequential civilian decision-makers in the entire Department of Defense when it comes to the safety and security of this country’s most critical infrastructure.

Before his current role, Walter served as Senior Advisor to the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment. His career began at Sandia National Laboratories, where he conducted physical security assessments for U.S. nuclear weapons developing and analyzing new security technologies and novel security assessment methodologies. That foundation is not incidental. It means that when Drew Walter evaluated the Active Shooter Prevention Project and the PRO Model(TM), he did so with the mind of someone who has spent his entire professional life building and assessing security frameworks at the highest possible level of consequence.

He also served as a professional staff member of the House Armed Services Committee, where he worked directly on the legislative architecture that governs how this country funds and directs its defense priorities. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from the Rochester Institute of Technology. His entire career has been defined by one consistent discipline: understanding how systems fail before they fail, and building the frameworks that prevent that from happening.

That is exactly the discipline that the Active Shooter Prevention Project was built on. Different scale, different domain, same foundational belief: prevention is not a reaction. It is a system. And systems that work are built before the crisis, not assembled in the aftermath of one.

What Happened at Bluegrass Army Depot The Full Story

The Blue Grass Army Depot in Richmond, Kentucky is the only Department of Defense organization to have tested Scylla an artificial intelligence platform that proactively identifies threats such as intruders, weapons, and abnormal behavior in real time using existing surveillance infrastructure and drones. This is not response technology. This is prevention technology. And that distinction is exactly why I was there.

On September 18, 2024, BGAD hosted a live demonstration of Scylla attended by more than 50 officials, security experts, and government representatives. Among those attending were Drew Walter, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Matters, and representatives for U.S. Representative Andy Barr, U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell, and U.S. Senator Rand Paul. Also in attendance were representatives from the Madison County and Berea Independent school districts a detail worth noting, because the same technology that protects a nuclear installation has direct application to every school in America.

The demonstration, led by Chris Willoughby, BGAD’s Electronic Security Systems Manager and the project lead for Scylla, showed what AI-powered computer vision can actually do in a real security environment. Scylla detected an armed intruder climbing a water tower from a camera a mile away. A second camera 660 feet away followed up with a closer look. The system identified two individuals carrying weapons and confirmed their identities through facial recognition within seconds. When three individuals breached a security fence, a drone launched automatically and tracked their movements until security personnel intercepted them. When two men staged a fight, Scylla detected the altercation within seconds and generated an alert identifying both parties. The system does not trigger on deer, wild turkeys, swaying branches, or holstered firearms — it is trained to identify genuine threats and eliminate the nuisance alarms that fatigue security personnel and inhibit real responses.

Drew Walter described the platform directly: “Scylla AI leverages any suitable video feed available to monitor, learn and alert in an instant, lessening the operational burden on security personnel. While humans still make the final decisions regarding threat response, AI augments detection capabilities.” He was equally direct about its most critical application: “Scylla’s transformative potential lies in its support to PSEAG’s core mission, which is to safeguard America’s strategic nuclear capabilities.”

The Army and DOD Physical Security Enterprise and Analysis Group selected the Scylla project submitted by BGAD as one of the top overall submissions in Fiscal Year 2024, and the Navy and Marine Corps have since moved toward their own testing at Joint Base Charleston in South Carolina. What started at a single depot in Kentucky is now moving across the entire Department of Defense.

The drone component of the demonstration used Skydio the autonomous drone platform that integrates directly with AI surveillance systems like Scylla to provide real-time aerial response when ground cameras flag a threat. Skydio drones launch automatically when triggered by alarms or access-control events, stream live video into the command center, and lock onto a target without requiring a dedicated pilot to manage every flight. One operator can command multiple drones simultaneously. When Drew Walter operated the drone during the demonstration with Willoughby beside him, that was not a photo opportunity. That was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Matters personally testing the technology his office is evaluating to protect America’s nuclear arsenal.

My role that day, and the role of the Active Shooter Prevention Project, was not incidental. I was there as one of the country’s foremost authorities on active shooter situations, and I said exactly what needed to be said about what this technology means for the future of prevention: “Leveraging technology while building on the human experience, Scylla’s true neural network artificial intelligence is fundamentally changing the landscape of how we prevent and respond. Once a bad actor is in motion, whether a terrorist threat, foreign force, or violent criminal attack, this comprehensive initiative that Blue Grass Army Depot has created will prove critical in foiling an attack.”

Low Tech to High Tech The Full Spectrum of Prevention

What the Bluegrass Army Depot demonstration represented and what most people in the public safety and prevention space have not yet fully understood is that prevention does not live at one end of the technology spectrum. It lives across all of it. The PRO Model(TM) was built to operate at every level, from the most basic awareness training in a neighborhood church with no budget for technology, all the way to AI-powered computer vision, autonomous drone surveillance, and real-time threat detection at a Department of Defense installation protecting America’s nuclear arsenal.

That is not a coincidence. It is a design principle. The same philosophy that says every person in a training room deserves to leave more capable than they arrived also says that every facility from the smallest school to the most sensitive military installation deserves a prevention framework scaled to its actual threat environment. Scylla and Skydio represent the high end of that spectrum: AI that can detect a gun a mile away, a drone that can track an intruder autonomously, a system that reduces nuisance alarms and focuses human attention on genuine threats.

But the low end of the spectrum matters just as much. Training that gives a receptionist, a teacher, a hospital administrator, or a corporate employee the awareness and the options to recognize a threat before it materializes is prevention at its most accessible and its most human. The Community of Experts that the Active Shooter Prevention Project has built 130 professionals with 750-plus years of combined experience — exists precisely because prevention at scale requires both ends of the spectrum working together. The AI sees the gun at 1,000 feet. The trained human in the building already knew something was wrong before the camera flagged it.

The physical security assessments we conduct identify the vulnerabilities that exist before any technology is deployed the unlocked doors, the blind spots, the procedural gaps that no camera can fix on its own. The training seminars build the human layer of awareness that technology amplifies but cannot replace. The keynote sessions and soft-style walk-through trainings create a prevention culture where people leave feeling more capable and more confident, not frightened and overwhelmed. And when the technology is ready when an organization has the budget, the infrastructure, and the threat environment that warrants Scylla or Skydio or the next generation of AI-powered physical security the PRO Model(TM) is already the foundation it plugs into.

That is the full spectrum that is what the Department of Justice adopted, and that is what the Department of Defense evaluated. And that is what Drew Walter recognized when he gave me his challenge coin at the end of a day that showed exactly what prevention looks like when it is built correctly at every level from the ground up.

Why the Right People Keep Choosing This Work

I want to address something directly because I think it matters for every person and every organization reading this who is trying to understand why the people featured in this biographical series a retired Vice Admiral, a two-star Army general, a senior civilian defense official have all found their way to the Active Shooter Prevention Project and the work of Chris Grollnek as active shooter expert and active shooter prevention expert.

It is not because of marketing it is not because of a polished pitch deck or a fear-based campaign that leveraged tragedy to generate attention. Every single person in this series arrived here through the same path: they evaluated the work, measured it against the standard they have spent their careers building and defending, and decided it was real. That is the only kind of validation worth having and the only kind we have ever sought.

Drew Walter has spent his career building exactly this kind of standard. He evaluated a prevention framework being tested at a United States Army depot, stood beside the drone operator as the system tracked a simulated intruder, and left that day with a clear understanding of what the Active Shooter Prevention Project represents in the national conversation about security. His challenge coin was not a souvenir. It was a professional assessment delivered in the language that defense professionals use when they want to be understood without making a speech.

The destination is “#NEVERHERE(TM).” The only road there runs through a national standard that covers every environment from the smallest office or church to the most protected military installation in America. The PRO Model(TM) is already that standard for the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense. The mission now is to make it THE standard for every organization in between. And the people who have spent their careers protecting this country at its highest levels have already made their decision about whether it is worth building toward.

The question now is whether your organization is going to make the same decision before it needs to or after.

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