A Japanese destroyer is in Pearl Harbor tonight ... getting ready to shoot down a missile launched from Barking Sands on Kauai.

The Chokai is the second Japanese ship to be equipped with the the American made Aegis Missile Defense System. Partly because Japan feels threatened by North Korea, its Navy is willing to spend 55 million dollars to train for and conduct this test.

"All of my officers and crew worked intensively for this mission," said Captain Katsuya Yamamoto in English. "We have conducted much training. We also completed a tracking exercise at the end of October."

Weather permitting, next Wednesday, the U.S. Navy will launch a medum range ballistic missile target from Barking Sands. The crew of the Chokai won't be told exactly when. They simply must be ready to use their radar to detect the target, track it....and then launch a SM-3 missile to destroy it.

"Hopefully a hundred miles up we'll have impact," Chris Taylor of the Missile Defense Agency said. "It's what we call "hit-to-kill" technology. There's nothing in the warhead. It's sheer kinetic energy and it's the equivalent to a ten ton truck hitting a wall at 600 miles an hour."

When the SM-3 and the target missile collide with that kind of force, both are obliterated. It's kind of like hitting a bullet with a bullet.

"It's rocket science. It's math. It's science. It's physics," said Taylor.

So far in 19 tests of the system on American ships and one other Japanese destroyer, 16 direct hits have been made. So the technology works pretty well, but it's also very expensive.

And while the U.S. Navy hopes to develop the system to the point where it can address even long range missiles, President Elect Obama wants to spend less not more on missile defense.

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