PLEASANT GROVE, Utah — As concerns mount in the skies across the country and in sensitive areas over unmanned aerial systems or drones, there should be security in the knowledge that there is technology already out there ready to combat them.
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Pleasant Grove is the home of Fortem Technologies, a company that continues to grow as employees work on a product that specializes in countering drones.
"We started out doing miniaturized radar systems," explained Fortem Chief Technology Officer Adam Robertson. "It’s a very sophisticated radar and we put it on a drone and we use that to see, can we hunt other drones?
Robertson helped start Fortem over eight years ago in Utah County.
"We need something really agile and really fast," he explained. "So we started with this drone and then we tried someone else’s drone and I told the team we’re not going to build drones, lots of people build drones and my team said, 'Adam, we know we can build drones,' and then a couple of my engineers created what became our Drone Hunter F700, so this one is designed to be incredibly agile and very fast."
The technology is manufactured in Pleasant Grove and ready to be shipped all around the world.
"We’ve shipped a lot to Japan. We’ve shipped a lot to Ukraine, U.S. DOD, obviously we can’t talk a lot about those. We’ve been in the Middle East. We have systems today in very hot deserts and extremely cold climates, as well," Robertson shared. "So that gives you an idea of our global presence. We’re in a lot of places.
What's the next step in dealing with large number of drone sightings?
Fortem gave FOX 13 News an inside look at its operations, with some sensitive materials being kept from view.
"This is capable of detecting a small drone, one that you might buy as a gift for Christmas, at about two-and-a-half kilometers away. You can’t even see with your eyes," said Robertson of one of the company's products. "So this is what we call the detection portion. So we need to detect the threat, track the threat, identify as a threat, and then we want to defeat the threat."
The defense products can shoot out something called a netgun to disable and capture a targeted drone.
"It sends out four metal slugs that expand the net. This net’s really big. It’s about 3 meters by 3 meters and it will envelope that target, tie it up, kind of like Spider-Man. We’ve got it," Robertson explained.
When asked if Fortem's technology was currently involved in any of the operations currently on the East Coast or in other key parts of the world, Robertson admitted that he couldn’t say much.
"We’re in the business of security, so part of being in security, we keep our mouths pretty tight," he said. "There’s so many things I wish we could talk about.
