Frontiers September 2014 29 in Smithfield, Pa.—the very site that makes and repairs those emergency locaters he wore when he jumped out of aircraft as a Marine. The Boeing Combat Survivor Evader Locater, or CSEL, as it is called, is but one of the growing number of programs at Smithfield, which comprises a factory site in Smithfield proper and a smaller test and assembly facility about 8 miles (13 kilometers) away at Lemont Furnace. Johnson is one of some 125 people employed at the main Smithfield site, which, in addition to the CSEL, makes electrical, radio-frequency and fiberoptic cables and harnesses; electronic panels and boxes; radio-frequency systems and antennas; and electrooptical and infrared systems. These southwest Pennsylvania area facilities became part of Boeing in 2010 when Boeing acquired Argon ST, a leading developer of PHOTOS: (Opposite page) Jessica King applies a sealing compound to a CSEL radio. (Above) Shown performing CSEL assembly tasks at Smithfield, Pa., are (clockwise from top) Ron Miniafee; Ron Naviglia, left, and Denny Carr; and Ken Nudo. command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR), as well as combat, systems. Argon ST opened the Smithfield facilities in 2003 to build Surface Ship Torpedo Defense systems for the U.S. Navy. Also known as “Nixie,” the acoustic jamming system is used on almost all of the Navy’s surface combatants to defend against torpedo threats. A device is towed about 2,100 feet (640 meters) behind the ship and acts like a decoy, using sound as a countermeasure to distract an incoming torpedo. More than 400 Nixie systems have been delivered to the U.S. Navy and some international customers. Most parts of the system are assembled at Smithfield’s larger facility, and the system’s towed decoy bodies are now manufactured at Lemont Furnace, where Nixie systems are tested in a 500,000-gallon (2.3-million-liter) acoustic tank. Meanwhile, more Boeing work is going to Smithfield these days—a sign of the times, literally. The main Smithfield building kept its Argon ST sign until earlier this year, when a large new Boeing monument sign was put in its place. The change did not go unnoticed. “People would stop in and say ‘Hey, when did you guys become Boeing?’ and then they’d ask where they could apply,” said Mark Smith, senior operations manager and second in command at the site. “This definitely
Frontiers September 2014 Issue
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