The Boeing Company [NYSE: BA] has been awarded a $5.4 million firm, fixed-price contract by the U.S. Navy to produce an updated shipboard network communications system for the USS Arleigh Burke guided-missile destroyer (DDG).

The contract is part of the Navy's DDG modernization program, under which new shipboard network communications technologies will be retrofitted in DDG 51-class destroyers during service overhauls and installed as new destroyers are constructed. The contract for USS Arleigh Burke is the second awarded to Boeing this year by the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren Division, Dahlgren, Va., to install the Gigabit Ethernet Data Multiplex System (GEDMS) on destroyers. In January, Boeing won a contract to supply the GEDMS system for DDG 111 and 112, which are under construction.

As the Navy's design and production agent for the GEDMS system, Boeing has developed a complete information-transfer system that enhances reliability, maintainability and survivability by managing data from the ship's navigation, steering-control, damage-control, machinery-control, combat and internal-communications systems. It was designed to replace the miles of point-to-point cabling, signal converters, junction boxes and switchboards associated with conventional cabling. The Boeing design is used for all GEDMS production.

Boeing's C3 Networks division will manage the two contracts and work will be performed in Huntington Beach, Calif.

A unit of The Boeing Company, Boeing Integrated Defense Systems is one of the world's largest space and defense businesses specializing in innovative and capabilities-driven customer solutions. Headquartered in St. Louis, Boeing Integrated Defense Systems is a $32.1 billion business with 71,000 employees worldwide.