InformNapalm continues to investigate data from the Russian manufacturer of the Albatross UAVs handed over to our community by hacktivists of the Cyber Resistance group. In this feature, we will show how the Albatross-M5 is used by the Russian Armed Forces in the war against Ukraine, offer an example of trouble-free development of the Russian military-industrial complex amid weak pre-2022 Western sanctions, and how Albatross circumvents the new wave of sanctions imposed on Russia after 2022. We will also show foreign contracts of Albatross and demonstrate how the global giant NVIDIA cooperates with the Russians, as well as SONY cameras still found in their UAVs, and Japanese SAITO engines in Alabuga warehouses.
In our previous publication, we wrote about the connection between Albatross and Kaspersky Lab. The latter responded with a rather vague statement indicating that Kaspersky ceased cooperation with Albatross on the Kaspersky Antidrone program back in 2022. However, this is simply not true, as InformNapalm has internal documentation from Albatross showing that the company tried to supply an anti-drone system to Kazakhstan in 2022-2023 under an agreement with TOO ComPortal . The supply agreement itself was concluded in the summer of 2022, but due to additional restrictions imposed by the Russian authorities on the export of dual-use goods in connection with the war Albatross took a very long time to obtain permission from the export control.
There are reasonable grounds to doubt that Kaspersky Lab did not know that their partner continued to sell their joint product. And there are even greater doubts that the anti-virus software manufacturer did not know that Albatross was transforming from a manufacturer of agricultural drones into a contractor of the Russian Armed Forces. A letter from Albatross to a customer regarding receipt of all permits stating an estimated delivery date of April 2023 is dated March 01 2023. Even based solely on open-source information, Kaspersky Lab should have already understood at that time that in January 2023, Albatross had become a resident of Alabuga and was producing drones for the Russian Army.
It should be mentioned here that the key element in the anti-drone system is a lidar. The Russians used Opal lidars from the Canadian company Neptec Technologies , which since 2020 has been part of the French group Lumibird. Here we can see the components of the Kaspersky Antidrone system and their cost.
And here is the end-user certificate, whereby back in 2020 Albatross guaranteed Lumibird not to transfer or re-export their devices to third countries, not to use them for military purposes or in the interests of the Russian government, not to use them for any other purposes other than the protection of civilian facilities.
However, as of March 2023, when Albatross was trying to get all the permits to export the antidrone system to Kazakhstan, it was already acting in the interests of the Russian government. Albatross itself became a manufacturer of weapons and equipment for the Russian Armed Forces. That is, it violated all these obligations.
However, Kaspersky Lab did not in any way limit foreign economic activities of Albatross. Accordingly, we can assume that cooperation was not terminated.
Albatross’ path to war
More and more information about the company’s involvement in the hostilities can be found in the public domain. However, we are more interested in their internal documentation.
Russia began its war against Ukraine in 2014, however, the sanctions imposed on the aggressor for the annexation of Crimea and the invasion of the Donbas had practically no impact on the development of the Russian industry. Albatross was founded in 2017, and its flagship was and remains the Albatross-M5 winged UAV. Before the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, we see the following dynamics in the development of Albatross:
2018 Albatross-M5: 4 UAVs produced, 2 of them sold, 2 used to provide services.
2019 Albatross-M5: 5 UAVs produced, 1 of them sold, 3 used to provide services.
2020 Albatross-M5: 6 UAVs produced, 4 of them sold, 2 used to provide services.
2021 Albatross-M5: 30 UAVs produced, 6 of them sold, 19 used to provide services.
The development dynamics are obvious. While developing the Albatross-M5 as a civilian drone the company grew its customer base to at least 60 Russian companies and started an anti-drone project with Kaspersky. Their reports show that at the end of 2021 there were already export sales of the anti-drone systems to Germany, Greece and Switzerland.
For investors, Albatross pointed out that given the availability of Western supplies, it is more cost-effective to buy foreign components. Thus, the components for electronic circuits were produced in Malaysia, Korea, Japan and China. Servo drive was made by Savox (Sweden-China). Motors made by Scorpion (USA-China). Radio channels (except for those of Russian origin and of own production) made by RFDesign (Australia). Motor regulators (except for those of Russian origin and of own production) mde by Scorpion (USA-China), Hobbyking (China). Propeller blades made by Aeronaut (Germany). Other components in the Albatross-M5 UAV came from Malaysia, China, Korea, Singapore, Australia, Sweden, and Switzerland.
They used Russian and German raw materials. As of the beginning of 2022, Albatross started a transition to entirely Russian-made raw materials, which led to an increase in production costs due to the higher cost of such raw materials. For the same reason, they continued to use carbon sandwich filler made in Germany.
In the absence of decisive anti-Russian sanctions, the company developed quite normally. Albatross document dump contains traces of the attempts to sell their products to Egypt, India, Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan, the UAE, Syria, Tanzania and Myanmar. The latter deserves a more detailed insight. Obviously, it was only a matter of time before the Albatross agricultural drone received a military application.
At the end of 2022, Albatross is preparing to become a resident of the Alabuga SEZ. The company signs an agreement with Alabuga Development LLC for the supply of 100 Albatross-M5 drones during 2023 for a total amount of 1.4 billion rubles. According to the specification, 50 drones must be for the day, and 50 for the night operation.
Full text of the agreement:
28_12_Договора_поставки_128_2022_Альбатрос-1[DOCX]
The internal documentation of Albatross clearly shows that their director Florov and chief engineer Spiridonov visited Iran in November 2022. Apparently, this trip was connected to the localization of Shahed production in Russia. We wrote about this in the first part of AlabugaLeaks series.
Another proof of Albatross’ direct involvement in the war effort is an interesting letter from the company’s director Florov to the head of the Institute of Transport Engineering and Control Systems of the Russian University of Transport, dated October 17, 2023. In it, Florov writes that since August 2022 on behalf of Albatross LLC, Spiridonov has been providing assistance to the Russian Armed Forces in the war zone. Accordingly, the chief engineer of Albatross needed to postpone his term exams.
Although Albatross does not publicly advertise its active involvement in the war, they are regularly updating their military presentation of Albatross-M5. The full presentation is available here:
Альбатрос_М5_Военная_23 [PPTX].
Obviously, during 2022-2023, Albatross-M5 was tested in a combat zone. The deployment geography extends along the entire front line.
Drones were mainly used for the tasks and in the interests of the FSB border service, special operations forces and the Russian Guard (Sudoplatov Battalion).
For example, the last testing area is listed in the Belgorod Oblast. And here is an infographic from Mash, the Russian propaganda media outlet, visualizing the work of the Albatross-M5 in November 2023, tracing a flight path of the UAV and comparing its resistance to electronic warfare with the products of the Albatross’ direct competitors ZALA and Supercam.
The flight data leave no doubt – not only Spiridonov, but also other Albatross specialists are directly involved in combat operations. At the same time, during the trial flights, emphasis was made on artillery observation rather than reconnaissance.
Other Albatross presentations include videos of the Albatross-M5 drone directing artillery to engage the Ukrainian M-777 howitzer.
Sony cameras enable the Albatross drones to take aerial photography and direct artillery. Typically these are Sony A6000 and Sony RX1R2 cameras for photography, as well as Sony FCB-EH6500 and Sony FCB-EV7500 cameras for video recording. Moreover, Albatross incorporates these devices into its own gyro-stabilized gimbals, some of them equipped with thermal imaging technology for recording video at night. These gimbals can be purchased from their website.
The military presentation also lists iRay thermal imagers from the Chinese corporation InfiRay Technologies Co., Ltd.
Foreign trade
Since 2020, Albatross LLC has been cooperating with the Myanmar Ministry of Defense. The Myanmar correspondence makes it abundantly clear that the Albatross-M5 had been regarded as a military UAV long before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Here is a draft of the letter that Albatross sent to Myanmar in November 2020.
The last paragraph deserves to be quoted here: “We believe that there is no need to explain that our products are dual-use goods (military and civilian), but our cooperation with the armed forces is not subject to disclosure. This is the main reason why we do not provide detailed information and do not publish this data on our website alb.aero. At the same time, we focus on the civil sector and are actively developing in this direction, demonstrating success in our media. But we ask you not to doubt that our devices are also used for military tasks, including combat ones (border protection).”
Albatross’ counterparty in these relations was Alliance Engineering Services Co., Ltd., but it acted in the interests of the Ministry of Defense. The drones were not to be sold directly by Albatross, but through the intermediary LLC Simplex. There is no information about sanctions against this company.
When planning their cooperation, the Burmese explicitly indicated that their military planned to have one UAV unit per battalion. “Thus, we would be needing up to 200-300 UAVs with service center and production facilities in Myanmar,” the letter says [PDF].
At the end of 2021, Albatross indicated to its investors that its products were included in the Myanmar Ministry of Defense procurement plan for 10 Albatross-M5 systems for 2022. In the summer of 2022, Florov wrote a letter to the Burmese with a proposal to continue and expand cooperation. “At the moment, our “Albatros” unmanned systems are successfully used in combat operations during a Special Military Operation on the territory of Ukraine. There, our drones proved to be a reliable tool in solving military intelligence tasks, adjusting artillery, evaluating the effectiveness of strikes, relaying communications to ground groups and accompanying operations” – these were the words Florov, among other things, used to motivate the Burmese to strengthen the “bonds of friendship and cordial relations” between Russia and Myanmar.
And then we stumbled upon a fun fact steeped in the Russian corruption tradition. When preparing sales to Myanmar, Albatross made two cost estimates – an external, “official” one to be shown to their counterparty, and an internal one, for their own planning. So the internal costing contained items listed as “contribution to Alexander”, in essence a middleman commission in the amount of $240,000, as well as “surcharge for subsequent discount” in the amount of $121,000. So much for cordial friendship…
As of early 2024, Albatross still had hopes of gaining access to the Myanmar market. Here is a letter from the same Alexander Dudov, who is so eager to get his quarter of a million dollars in commissions.
This year, Albatross continues another epic with its entry into the United Arab Emirates market. Alexander is involved there too. The entire relevant correspondence is here: Project UAE [PDF]. We could not help but notice that in the correspondence on the price and importing options for the UAE, Albatross employee Mikhail Goldberg indicates that “Albatross M5 was tested in Burkina Faso for 1 month. This event was organized by a private military company. We cannot give any other data on this matter”.
Interestingly, in other Albatross documentation we found information about a certain Beryozovaya Dolina LLC. In the Albatross business plan, this Beryozovaya Dolina company is marked with a note “Africa”. This company was also involved in the supply of the Kaspersky Antidrone system to Kazakhstan. It raises a question whether there is a connection here with the Wagner group.
Suppliers and partners
Albatross uses NVIDIA Jetson microcomputers for neural network-based image recognition.
Florov’s emails show that communication and cooperation with NVIDIA has been ongoing since at least 2016. It did not stop after the full-scale invasion – neither after sanctions against the Russian Federation, nor after direct US sanctions against Albatross LLC. Florov’s contact is Anton Dzhoraev , Senior Enterprise Business Development Manager at NVIDIA Corporation. The most recent example, is a letter dated February 26, 2024 with an invitation for Albatross to attend the top conference in the world on artificial intelligence NVIDIA GTC 2024. Dzhoraev wraps up his message suggesting that “the invitation can be forwarded to students and interested colleagues.” Obviously, he means the students of Alabuga Polytech. Apparently, Dzhoraev is well aware of what Albatross LLC and Allabuga SEZ are, and what they all do.
Another interesting letter to Florov, dated November 24, 2023, from an Alabuga accountant shows that Russians continue ro use internal combustion engines from the Japanese manufacturer Saito . Previously, these engines were found in Russian Orlan-10 UAVs. It is not yet known how these engines got to the warehouse in Alabuga and for what purposes the Saito FG-40 engines were transferred to Florov, who is marked as the “Chief Design Officer of Alabuga SEZ” on the transfer bill. In our first investigation, we wrote that the Russians were trying to establish their own engine production in Alabuga. Saito engines could be models for reverse engineering and copying.
Also, various supplier companies constantly send Florov offers of cooperation. Most of them are no longer making any pretenses and openly say that they are trading in sanctioned products. For example, the Russian Atlant LLC represents the interests of Asia Semiconductor. Their sales manager Svetlana Vasilyeva points out that Asia Semiconductor brings together the Shanghai Chenheyi Technology Development Co. Ltd and Beijing Online Technology Group Co. Ltd.
Asia Semiconducter supplies power connectors, transistors, resistors, diodes, microcircuits and other parts and consumables to highly specialized production facilities.
Svetlana writes directly: “We supply products from well-known companies, including those on sanctions lists: Mean Well, Aimtec, Siemens, Chinfa, Maxim, XILINX, Atmel, Wago, Vicor, ST/TI and others.
…
We work with both state and defense enterprises and private industries (turnkey, VAT, delivery and customs clearance). We prepare a state customs declaration for the import of our products, guaranteeing receipt of ordered goods on time with the resolution of all customs issues.
We control the entire cycle of orders delivery throughout Russia and the CIS countries.
…
Delivery time to our warehouse in Russia is 4-6 weeks.”
The attached Asia Semiconductor warehouse inventory list contains components manufactured by global giants Intel, Fujitsu and Siemens. The document can be viewed here: Копия Склад в Китае 13112023 [XLSX].
So, this is how Albatross works. Sanctions against Russia before the full-scale invasion did not affect the development of the Russian military-industrial complex. Sanctions after the invasion are circumvented with the help of intermediaries. Russia continues to kill Ukrainians and destroy our cities, and plans to do so for a very long time. How can we stop this? By giving Ukraine weapons, by supporting financially, by taking asymmetrical hybrid measures against Russia, by revising the sanctions policy and putting pressure on China and the countries facilitating the flow of equipment to Russia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, etc.).
Read more publications based on the data from Cyber Resistance hacktivists
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