Suldin has now reported on Facebook about the app’s first combat use against a Russian Kalibr cruise missile on October 22. “The Kalibr was flying at a very low altitude, due to the characteristics of the terrain it was difficult to detect. But some vigilant citizens saw it and alerted the military through the ePPO application. Our paratroopers reached the target in a few seconds, they had enough time and there are no problems taking the Kalibr from the sky.”
Military command confirms successes
The app can also be used against drones. There were initial successes here, too: “On October 25, two Shahed-136s were destroyed with the help of our ePPO calculations,” the programmer wrote. “Already now, the soldiers of the Southern Air Command are using the data received from ePPO users and have the first results,” Ukraine’s Southern Command confirmed on Facebook.
The operation is very simple: once users have seen a missile, they open the application and use the icon to select the type of attacker: missile, drone or plane. He points his phone at the target and presses a big red button. In the case of air defense, a marker flashes on an electronic map. The attack is again verified by the army, then defensive measures are started.
A Russian Kalibr missile flies at about 800 km/h, a Shahed-136 drone at about 200 km/h. Since these are mostly fired from Russian territory beyond the Ukrainian border, there is enough flight time for a sighting. Small missiles in particular are difficult for air defense systems to locate, especially when they fly under radar. The German Iris-T system, which was delivered to Ukraine, can fire at targets up to 20 kilometers in altitude and 40 kilometers in range.
The Ukrainian military says it has shot down more than 300 Iranian Shahed-136 Kamikaze drones since mid-September. Air Force spokesman Yuri Ihnat told reporters in Kyiv on Friday. Russia is supposed to have ordered 2,400 such drones. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia had carried out more than 8,000 air strikes and launched 4,500 rockets. According to him, the capital Kyiv has defended itself from 23 drones in the last two days.
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