34 years of self-reliance of CT Group
CT Group has marked its 34th anniversary with a set of announcements positioning it as one of ASEAN's largest deep-tech groups, with 15 technology companies under it and eight of them leading in strategic technology industries.
Its fields span unmanned aerial vehicles, the low-altitude economy, national digital twins, robotics, biotechnology, carbon fibre, semiconductor chips, space technology, self-driving vehicles and AI. The group describes technological autonomy as a thorny path, but points to acceleration across its 15 deep-tech companies in the first six months of 2026.
Sixteen UAV categories, five component factories
CT UAV, the group's drone arm, says it has researched, developed and produced UAVs across 16 categories for Vietnam — logistics, rescue, fire prevention and firefighting, environmental protection, agriculture, forestry and fishery, security, carbon credits, advertising and passenger transport — for both domestic use and export.
The company operates five factories producing components in-house: airframes, circuit boards, propellers, motors and batteries, built to the AS9100D aerospace standard in Ho Chi Minh City, alongside 22 laboratories in Vietnam, the United States, France, Israel and Taiwan.
That vertical structure is what CT UAV credits for an average localisation rate of about 87.5% across its core technology groups: aerodynamics, flight control, composites, high-energy batteries, electric motors, telecommunications microchips, AI recognition and secure communication. The company says it holds 172 pieces of intellectual property valued at close to 200 million USD.
A US factory and a 400-hectare complex in Tay Ninh
CT UAV plans to inaugurate a UAV factory in the United States in the fourth quarter of 2026. In Vietnam, it has applied to build a 71-hectare high-density battery plant, a 75-hectare hydrogen battery area and a 400-hectare UAV technology complex in Tay Ninh.
Headcount is set to scale with the footprint. The company reports more than 900 scientists, engineers and specialists drawn from Vietnam, the United States, Japan, Israel, Taiwan and China, and says that number will rise to 9,000 by 2027.
Its product roadmap sits at the harder end of the industry: swarming UAVs, high-stability platforms, stealth UAVs with AI-managed battery systems, and robotic UAVs.
The low-altitude economy bet
Through GASCO-LAE, CT Group has moved into the low-altitude space economy, with 600 LAE services being deployed in Vietnam and globally. The unit is completing legal procedures for an ASEAN Centre on Truong Chinh — Cong Hoa, near Terminal T3 of Tan Son Nhat Airport, with nearly 500,000 square metres of floor space.
In February 2026, GASCO-LAE used a CT UAV aircraft to open a regular commercial route across the sea from Can Gio to Vung Tau, making Ho Chi Minh City the first city in ASEAN with a scheduled commercial UAV route.
Recent operations have been more public. On 28 June the unit flew mobile LED screens along the Saigon River with Red Bull and ALTA Media, and on 3 July it ran UAV flights from high-speed vessels together with a unit under the Ministry of National Defence. It plans 10,000 flights across 600 fields in Vietnam and other countries.
Alongside the flying, GASCO-LAE is working on the economic, legal and technical infrastructure the sector will need: system planning, growth models, regulatory frameworks, radar systems, and video transmission and reception in low-wave areas. It singles out Compliance Chips as an indispensable piece of the low-altitude economy.
Feeding the drones into a digital twin
The group's digital-twin company, NDT 15, is expanding along B2G and B2B lines into smart cities, tourism, precision agriculture, aquaculture, environment and disaster management, carbon MRV, forest management, seaports and industrial parks — largely the same domains CT UAV's aircraft are built to survey. The company frames it as a multi-layered twin of the physical world that lets AI act on it in a planned and controlled way.