India’s ACCORD makes debut at AAD 2026 – SABC News – Breaking news, special reports, world, business, sport coverage of all South African current events. Africa’s news leader.
With the focus of current conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East on the destructive capabilities of drones, attention is now turning to how to counter the uncrewed aircraft systems.
Marking its first time at the Africa Aerospace and Defence expo at Waterkloof Air Force Base, Bangalore -based Accord Software and Systems showcased its electronic warfare systems that included long-range Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) jammers and wideband anti-drone technology.
The company’s Senior Vice President Jitendra Sethi elaborated that they have a very large product-line in the GNSS domain. These are basically GNSS receivers for strategic applications for Indian missiles and satellites for land and naval systems. However, now they have diversified into electronic warfare primarily in the GNSS domain – which is jamming of GNSS constellations which are used by defence systems in navigation like GPS (United States), GLONASS (Russia), BeiDou (China) and Galileo (European Union).
He said: “In the counter-drone domain you need to have GNSS jamming technique, you need to have RF (radio frequency) jamming capability, you need to have electro-optical capability and radar. Currently ACCORD has specialisation in two domains – one is RF jamming and the other is GNSS jamming.”
He further explained that they have the capability of detection and jamming from 400 megahertz to 12 gigahertz – in this range all drone communication links can be covered. They can detect RF up to 12 km and can carry out jamming up to 10 km. While in the GNSS domain, they have a jamming capability of up to 80 km using a directional antenna. The targets which are within the beam of the signal are 100 percent jammed.
Sethi said using an omni-directional antenna they can create a GPS bubble or a GNSS firewall so that drones coming from any direction are jammed. Any number of targets can be engaged. The radius of this dome is about 10 km. This is 100 percent effective, provided there is a clear line of sight between the jammer and the target. Weather has no impact on GNSS or RF jamming. The equipment can be positioned at fixed ground installations, on a vehicle for greater mobility and on naval vessels.
He said if they entered into a deal with a foreign country, they would set up a product support line with a local partner. Sethi pointed out that in the rapidly changing technological game of cat and mouse, as the drones are improving, Accord is also upgrading their technology in terms of GNSS jamming and RF jamming and they have a ten-year roadmap.