In my neck of the woods there has been a proliferation of street light cell towers. This is the latest counter move to Russian missile developments.
Ostensibly these towers are for mobile phones. But this most likely just a cover for a radar system capable of detecting stealth aircraft. In this case stealth cruise missiles. The advantage of a cruise missile is that it does not follow a parabolic path. So, its trajectory is less predictable making interception more difficult.
Cell towers were crucial to the shoot down of the F-117 over Serbia back in 1999. The microwaves coming from cell phone communications creates a sea of electromagnetic energy. These waves bounce of things in the environment. Any object travelling through this sea will create a wake. With the right amount of computing power and enough cell towers the imaging of this wake is performed. Cell towers were not as numerous back in the 90's so the image resolution must have been primitive. Given the number of cell towers we have today image resolution must be much better in order to resolve something as small as a cruise missile.
This information is then fed to ground based lasers or stealth airships armed with lasers to shoot down the cruise missiles from the top down.These towers also have a domestic spying use as well. They can be used to monitor wifi and cell phone communications.
SOURCES:
1.
"1999 F-117A Shootdown".
En.Wikipedia.Org, 2018, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_F-117A_shootdown.
Accessed 2 Sept 2018.
2.
Majumdar, Dave. "Russia Declares America's
Stealth Fighters And Bombers To Be 'Paper Fiction'". The National
Interest, 2016,
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/russia-declares-americas-stealth-fighters-bombers-be-paper-17441.
Accessed 2 Sept 2018.
3.
Reuters. "Russian Cruise Missiles Target
Syria". U.S., 2016,http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-aleppo-idUSKCN10U1EE.
Accessed 2 Sept 2018.
4.
Sweetman, Bill. "Stealth Threat Whoops!
Phone Signals May Unmask A $40 Billion Flying Secret.". Popular Science,
2001, https://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-space/article/2001-12/stealth-threat.
Accessed 2 Sept 2018.
5.
traffic, Intercepting. "Intercepting Wifi
Traffic". Information Security Stack Exchange, 2018,
https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/54313/intercepting-wifi-traffic.
Accessed 2 Sept 2018.
6.
Yue, Tao. "SCOUTING FOR SURVEILLANCE
DETECTION OF THE B-2 STEALTH BOMBER AND A BRIEF HISTORY ON “STEALTH”". The
Tech, 2001, p. 7, http://tech.mit.edu/V121/N63/Stealth.63f.html. Accessed 2
Sept 2018.