OREM — On a hot night in July, a Colorado pilot wanted for murder hopped a fence at the St. George airport and broke into a passenger jet. The pilot, Brian Hedglin, started the plane up, drove it into several parked cars and finally shot himself. He died in the plane, leaving an array of unanswered questions.

What authorities did know, however, was how Hedglin snuck into the airport in the first place: he threw a carpet over the razor wired-fence and eluded the relatively minimal on-site security.

If the incident ultimately illustrated the gaps in small airport security networks, then an Orem company has developed a tool that aims to plug those gaps.

Formed in 2009, SpotterRF produces small, lightweight radar tools that track movement — say, from intruders or even terrorists. The radar is able to fill gaps that traditional security cameras might miss, and it does so at a fraction of the cost.

The radar also is exactly the kind of thing that could have made a difference in the St. George incident, according to company spokesman Dennis Steele.

“Where this type of thing can be used is to prevent things like that,” Steele said. “This is a cost-effective solution that would prevent those types of breaches.”

Company CEO Logan Harris said the advantages of SpotterRF’s products include a significantly lower cost for more effective security footage. The radar can catch movement and direct a camera to that movement instead of having cameras focused on every inch of the property.

For example, if a company has a 20-acre facility it might need 22 security cameras to see any possible intrusions. Each of those cameras can cost up to $25,000. On top of that, the company might need to pay for analytic software that controls where the cameras are aimed. The point, he explained, is that security can get really expensive.

“Your system is quickly approaching $1 million if you want full continuous coverage of that area,” he said.

By contrast, a single SpotterRF radar device for the commercial market costs about $12,000. That system can monitor the entire area and be wired into cameras to direct them at movement. The result is a vastly cheaper but more effective security net, Harris said.

To illustrate their point, SpotterRF produced a short YouTube video. The video clocks the time it takes to spot the movement of an intruder far off on a distant hill. With just a security camera it takes nearly three minutes to spot the intruder. However, with the SpotterRF radar supplementing the camera it only takes nine seconds, and the radar system picks up the intruder hundreds of meters farther away.

He further explained that SpotterRF produces different models for different purposes. One model, the M600C, is marketed for the military and has been incorporated into a backpack to facilitate its use in remote areas. It’s about as big as a chemistry textbook and weighs just four pounds. The device was even included on Popular Science’s Best of What’s New in 2012 list.

By contrast, competing radar systems weigh 11 times more and are large enough that they’re designed to be mounted on a tripod. In other words, they’re not easy to lug around the remote places where they’re often needed.

SpotterRF also makes a smaller model designed for the commercial sector. Harris said that version is roughly the size and shape of a WiFi antenna and can be deployed in places where officials need to keep people out but don’t have resources to install numerous cameras and security guards. He added that data centers, bridges, dams and other infrastructure facilities that are sensitive to intruders or attack can benefit from the device.

“A data center is a pretty big facility and they need to know where to point the cameras,” Harris said.

According to Harris, the origins of SpotterRF and the radar system stretch back years. Harris graduated from BYU in 1993 with a master’s degree in mechanical engineering. He went on to work at IBM, among other companies, and developed radar at ImSAR and Wavetronix.

In 2009, Harris left to form SpotterRF. Today, the company has 22 employees, most of them engineers, and has been profitable for nearly two years.

Harris couldn’t speak specifically about all of his company’s contracts, but said military entities are interested in the device. He also said that the Maryland Department of Transportation has used the radars to protect bridges from attack. And smaller airports like St. George — where bigger security systems like those at large airports are too expensive — could benefit from the device.

The goal, Harris said, is to create a safer world. He pointed out that the device could help prevent terrorists from getting into sensitive areas, but also could prevent non life-threatening issues like copper theft or resulting power outages. In the end, it’s about improving people’s lives.

“We’re trying to make a difference to our customers and society in general,” Harris said. “And that’s really what SpotterRF is about.”