For years science fiction has depicted criminals, governments and security forces being able to block signals with radio jammers.
Now criminals in the UK have started to get their hands on jammers and are using them to break into cars.
The incident in Manchester showed that an entire open car park can easily be covered by jammers.
For those worried about jammers, the advice is make sure your car is locked before walking away.
In Germany, meanwhile, some lorry drivers have used jammers to evade the country's GPS-based road-tolling system .If you do an internet search on GPS jammers, you get over 300,000 hits, with many of these linking to sites offering them for sale," says Jim Hammond of the intelligent transport systems working group at Britain's Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO).
Even low-power jammers could be detected, he suggested, if legislation was passed requiring smartphones, many of which now contain GPS receivers, to look out for jammers and warn other phones nearby if one is detected.
They had used GPS jammers to prevent the vehicles being tracked after the thefts.
The money he had found from those efficiencies would be redirected towards unmanned aerial systems, new electronic jammers for the navy, a penetrating bomber and some other hardware upgrades.
But it is unknown how many sensors there are in the JLOC system, or how accurately it can determine the location of a jammer.Some experts in the field are sceptical that it will be possible to develop cost-effective systems to locate low-power, short-range jammers around civilian infrastructure.
More than 50 American planes are still flying every day, including some fast jets as well as tankers, electronic jammers and airborne control systems.
But none of this wizardry will be available in time for the expected campaign against Iraq.Andrew Brookes, an air power analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, says he doubts whether British bombers will be used in the hardest parts of the air campaign against Iraq; it would be too much trouble for the Americans to protect them with "jammers"—electronic warfare aircraft.
