Backpack Jammer Muzzles Cell Phones, Drones

If you've ever felt like creating you own phone-free zone by jamming the irritating people yakking loudly on their cellphones, then you're not the only one. The Naval Surface Warfare Center has looking for suppliers for a "Man-Packable Electronic Attack System," a portable set-up which will allow you to jam any radio-based communication for a kilometer around. (Compare that to the puny jammers that the New York Times cooed about yesterday -- they can only block signals in a 30-foot radius.) It will work for up to an hour on battery power, or you can plug into a power source. And if you think they're close to locating you, you can ditch it to operate on its own in 'unattended attack mode', identifying and jamming anything you tell it to. Good-bye wif-fi, adios radios...

It's a powerful capability to have. Tactically, you can shut down insurgent communications and stop them from warning each other. On a larger scale, it means that commandos can disable an enemy command and control center for a specified time without having to get too close. It might also be useful for preventing UAVs from transmitting anything back, purely apart form the general chaos and disruption it can cause with civilian communications systems.

With specs like this, you wouldn't want one to fall into the wrong hands:

1*) Weight: The threshold requirement for maximum system weight is 39.6 pounds. The objective requirement is less than 26.45 pounds....*

2) Effective Attack Range: The minimum attack range is one km (0.6219 miles).

*3) Effectiveness : The system shall disrupt the enemy signal with 75% confidence. *

*4) Operation : As an objective, the EA system shall be capable of operations in an unattended attack mode for up to 10 minutes per hour, for a maximum period of six hours. *

*5) Power : The system shall run on standard AC power, military vehicle power and military batteries. *

*6) Frequency Range and threat types: As an objective the system shall be capable of attacking any current or future threat from DC to 6 GHz. As a threshold, the system may attack specific threats or a subset of threats any where in the spectrum. *

If you've got something that fits the bill, then the Navy want to hear from you with all the details:* Product information should include system size,weight, frequency range, tuning accuracy, tuning speed, tuning resolution, instantaneous transmit bandwidth, number of simultaneous output channels, output power levels, target set, attack methods, field programmability/upgradeability, operational and storage temperatures, power requirements in standby and transmitting modes, setup time, tear down time, active capabilities, reactive capabilities, and setup/configuration...*

UPDATE: Oh, and they thought of security too:

*8) Security : The system shall be capable of declassification by removing the hard drive or other removable media. *