FAIRFAX, Va., 12 Jan. 2013. Boeing [NYSE: BA] will continue helping improve situational awareness for U.S. Navy surface combat ships under a $46 million exercised option of its Ship's Signal Exploitation Equipment (SSEE) Increment F contract.

The funding, provided to Boeing subsidiary Argon ST, covers seven systems over 18 months, representing the third lot of full-rate production units. Argon has delivered a combined total of more than 80 SSEE systems since 2000.

Argon ST is the prime contractor to the U.S. Navy for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) systems through the ship's (SSEE) program. The SSEE Increment E (SSEE-E) program developed a tactical cryptologic system (TCS) which performs all signal processing functions necessary to acquire, identify, locate and analyze signals for external and internal information. The SSEE program supports the warfighters with actionable intelligence and provides horizontal intelligence integration across all available sources.

SSEE-E performs real-time SIGINT exploitation and geo-location across a range of target signals, and a backend subsystem that performs non-real-time mission management and analysis.

Building upon SSEE-E capabilities, SSEE Increment F (SSEE-F) systems augment the SSEE-E capabilities with the additional Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), embedded processing, and server network technologies. The SSEE-F system represents Boeing's next generation of the U.S. Navy's surface cryptologic systems for executing communications intelligence missions. Increment F improves on the E’s antennas, signal acquisition, and direction finding, facilitating increased data collection and better identification of potential threats. SSEE-F systems enhance current capabilities to acquire, identify, locate and analyze signals.