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Rather than using a jammer I wonder if it'd be possible to use an EMP to fry the cellphone's semiconductors.

I'd also be worried if using a jammer, if the device was programmed to detonate itself, after prolonged lack of contact with a cell tower.

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I'm sure the Iraqi people - let alone the Russians and the Chinese - would love it if the US set off twenty or thirty EMPs every day as they went about their daily business.

I was was thinking some kind of small electromagnetic pulse, not a nuclear powered one.

What would keep you from frying your own equipment?

Apparently specially hardened vacuum tubes aren't that susceptible to EMP pulses

So you're saying we should switch all the electronics that the military has on the ground over to vacuum tubes?

Standing outside the beam? (Assuming there is a 'beam', of course. I ignore the radiation pattern of an EMP)

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