THE United States Air Force wants to fry your phone. And your computer. And your car. It’s investing millions into modifying missiles into weaponised microwave ovens.

The devastating power of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) has long been associated with nuclear war.

It’s a flash of raw electromagnetic energy through the atmosphere that fuses delicate electronics into irreparable smoking scrap.

The problem has always been the nuclear bit: Using one to fry a phone network would have been overkill.

Not to mention a trigger for an almost inevitable ‘mutually assured destruction’ escalation.

So the US military has been seeking less lethal ways of sowing confusion among its enemies.

Enter flying microwave ovens.

The idea was tested as far back as 2012 when Boeing flew an EMP missile off a B-52.

It didn’t get the contract, though.

Flightglobal reports defence contractor Raytheon has just been handed $US4.8 million to attach a microwave generator to two conventional cruise missiles.

It’s going to be named CHAMP (Counter-electronics High-power microwave Advanced Missile Project)

The idea is for the long-range cruise missile to weave its way over a predesignated flight path, blasting out up to 100 pulses of disabling electromagnetic energy.

It’s not much use against a modern army, though.

Everything from tanks to military-grade walkie-talkies are supposed to be ‘hardened’ against such an attack.

Where such a weapon would prove useful, however, is an arena such as Syria and Iraq.

Islamic State’s communications network relies upon modern digital technology, such as smart phones.

One of these cruise missiles flying back-and-forth over its self-declared capital of Raqqa, for example, could critically disable the jihadists’ command-and-control networks.