How the Army’s Artillery Cannons are Joining the Missile Defense Game An M109 Paladin 155mm Howitzer made history recently by shooting down a fast-moving maneuvering cruise missile with a “hypervelocity projectile.” Here's What You Need to Remember: The success of the shootdown, Roper added, relied upon the integration of AI-enabled data-analytics increasingly able to gather, organize, analyze data with great reliability in a near instantaneous fashion. So not only will air-sea-and land targeting sensors have an ability to exchange information across otherwise disparate information systems, but AI-enabled algorithms can gather the data, perform near real-time analytics and efficiently distribute organized information where needed.