[6] ST Engineering's history began with its precursor, the Chartered Industries of Singapore, which was established in 1967 by the newly independent Singaporean government as an ammunition manufacturer.

[9] In Mar 2007, ST Engineering was ranked 19th in the aerospace & defence industry and 1,661th of 2,000 of the world's largest public companies by Forbes.

It was ranked Number 58 in the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's list of the world's top 100 defence manufacturers in 2023.

[23] It is the world's largest airframe maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) company, and one of the few with in-house engineering design and development capabilities.

ST Engineering is a major investor in Skyports to provide drone services for Singapore’s Public Utilities Board.

It has over four decades of activity in the development of military technology, from aircraft and avionics upgrades, to designing and building battlefield mobility platforms, soldier systems, ammunition and naval vessels.

[47] The corruption charges were eventually withdrawn and in January 2017, Chang pleaded guilty to "failing to use reasonable diligence in performing his duties" and was given a short detention order of 14 days.

[45] Since then, six other former ST Engineering Marine senior executives were implicated in the corruption scandal, including former financial controller and senior vice-president of finance Ong Tek Liam who pleaded guilty to ten out of 118 charges in relating to the falsification of accounts,[48] former senior vice-president Mok Kim Whang who pleaded guilty to 49 out of 826 corruption charges,[46] ex-chief operating officer Han Yew Kwang who pleaded guilty to 50 out of 407 charges and was sentenced to six months' jail and fined $80,000,[49] former president of commercial business Tan Mong Seng who faced 445 corruption charges[50] and was sentenced to 16 weeks' jail,[46][51] and ex-financial controller Patrick Lee Swee Ching who pled guilty to seven of 38 charges of conspiring with others between 2004 and 2007 to make false entries in petty cash vouchers, and was given the maximum fine of $210,000.