Signals men

The Special Technology Centre was created in St Petersburg in 2001 by graduates of the Budyonny Military Academy of the Signal Corps, according to the Russian investigative outlet iStories; its co-owners, Colonel Alexei Terentyev and Oleg Tsarik, were radio-intelligence specialists, and the company was registered as an LLC in January 2003. Its main client has been Russia’s military intelligence service, the GRU. In December 2016 the US sanctioned STC for assisting the GRU in electronic intelligence, and in 2017 it was designated under the CAATSA law as part of Russia’s intelligence complex.

The artillery’s eye

Its best-known product is the Orlan-10, a small composite reconnaissance drone. Orlans usually fly in groups of two or three: one at 1,000 to 1,500 metres for reconnaissance, a second for electronic warfare and a third as a data relay, and one ground station can control up to four. More than 1,000 had been built by 2018 in 11 variants; a system with two drones cost about 5 million roubles in 2013. Orlans have flown in Donbas since 2014, in Syria, where one found a surviving Su-24 crewman in November 2015, in Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh, and since 2022 across Ukraine, where Oryx counted at least 208 destroyed by February 2025.

Western chips, Russian drone

STC’s revenue reached 14 billion roubles in 2021, about ten times its level a decade earlier, iStories reported. The Orlan is built largely from imported parts: Western investigators found American, Swiss and other microchips in downed drones, and STC’s supplier SMT-ILogic had imported about 70 million dollars of products since 2017. In July 2023 Russia’s defence minister said Orlan deliveries had increased 53 times since early 2022, and in February 2024 STC claimed an annual output of more than 1,000 Orlan-10s. The larger Orlan-30 adds a laser designator.

المصانع

• St Petersburg headquarters · 21-2 Gzhatskaya Street, St Petersburg — Registered address

الناس

• Alexei Terentyev · co-owner — Colonel, radio-intelligence specialist
• Oleg Tsarik · co-owner — Radio-intelligence specialist