Italy has placed a contract for two new DDX destroyers for the Italian Navy, with the programme valued at approximately €3.7 billion including around €1.3 billion in options, according to Orizzonte Sistemi Navali.
The contract was signed between OCCAR and Orizzonte Sistemi Navali, the joint venture owned by Fincantieri and Leonardo, and covers development, production, logistics studies and initial in-service support. Fincantieri holds 51% of OSN and Leonardo 49%, with subcontracts expected to be placed in the coming weeks worth around €1.8 billion and €1.7 billion respectively.
The two ships are intended to replace the Italian Navy’s Horizon-class destroyers and will be considerably larger vessels, measuring around 180 metres in length and displacing 13,500 tonnes. Each will have a crew of 251 and a stated range of 4,000 nautical miles, with deliveries scheduled for 2033 and 2035.
Fincantieri will act as platform system integrator, while Leonardo will develop the combat system. OSN says the ships are being designed around a high degree of automation and digital integration, bringing together sensors, weapons, command-and-control systems and ship-management functions within a common architecture intended for multinational operations.
The combat system will include Leonardo’s SADOC 5 C5I system, a high-power fully digital S-band AESA radar and an MBDA weapons package. According to the company, the combination is intended to give the DDX an Integrated Air and Missile Defence capability against conventional missile, ballistic and hypersonic threats.
The platform will also incorporate a DC power sub-network with energy storage, a new stabilisation system integrated with the ship’s steering system and further development of Fincantieri’s digital ship-management architecture. The company says the design will also allow the destroyers to manage uncrewed surface and underwater systems as part of the wider combat system.
Pierroberto Folgiero, Chief Executive Officer and General Manager of Fincantieri, said: “The DDX programme represents a strategic milestone for Fincantieri and for Italy’s national defence industry. It is one of the most significant naval programmes launched in Italy in recent years and confirms Fincantieri’s role as an industrial and technological reference point in the design and integration of complex naval systems.”
Leonardo Chief Executive Lorenzo Mariani said: “Taking part in this programme – which is set to establish new standards in naval defence capabilities – confirms the Italian Navy’s confidence in Leonardo’s technologies, which are capable of meeting the need to operate in an integrated manner across different domains and in complex scenarios.”
The DDX design also incorporates Fincantieri’s Navis Sapiens concept, intended to bring together data generated across the ship for operational decision-making, technical management and maintenance. Connectivity with shore facilities is planned to support predictive maintenance, logistics and the transfer of mission information between ship and naval base.
Actually seems like a quite a reasonable cost for such a large and capable warship. All this talk of £3 billion for a Type 83 seemed a stretch to justify it’s cancellation imo. In fact I think these ships workout cheaper than a flight 3 burke.
Because they’re built in Europe’s shipbuilding capital, home of efficiency and cheap prices.
You reckon BAE, who has spent the last decade building Glasgow for a similar price to one of these Italian destroyers, has any particular interest in being cheap or efficient?
While I would like to believe that theory, UK defence procurement is considerably more complicated in reality.
The MOD does not simply hand contracts to companies such as BAE Systems and allow them to name their price. Defence procurements are subject to formal procurement procedures, supplier qualification, competitive tendering and published award criteria. Under the current Procurement Act, the MOD can use a competitive flexible procedure that effectively allows it to shortlist suitably qualified suppliers before inviting them to tender. Suppliers must demonstrate the financial, technical, and organisational capability required to deliver the contract.
A statutory system also controls pricing where genuine competition is not available. For qualifying single-source defence contracts, generally contracts worth £5 million or more, the MOD has access to detailed cost information and audit rights. At the same time, the SSRO regulates the methodology used to determine the contractor’s profit rate. For 2026/27, the baseline profit rate is 9.10%, although the actual contract profit rate is adjusted under the statutory formula and to the risks and circumstances of the individual contract. So the idea that defence contractors inflate prices and pocket whatever profit they want does not accurately describe how the system is designed to operate.
Where I think the criticism of MOD procurement has considerably more substance is on the Government side of the equation. The MOD has repeatedly struggled with the specification, management, development and delivery of major defence programmes.
The history of the Bowman programme is a good example. The replacement for the Clansman radio system faced years of delays, changing requirements, and technical problems. The National Audit Office reported that the original target for introducing Bowman by 1995 was missed, the MOD subsequently lost confidence in its preferred supplier, and it launched a fresh competition in 2000. The resulting Bowman and Combat Infrastructure Platform programme ultimately became a £2.4 billion programme. (National Audit Office (NAO))
That is the distinction worth making. There are mechanisms designed to control what defence companies charge. Mechanisms also exist for competition, supplier qualification, cost scrutiny and, where appropriate, regulated profit rates. But none of those mechanisms can compensate for poor government requirements, constantly changing specifications, weak programme management, unrealistic delivery assumptions or procurement decisions that are subsequently abandoned.
In many cases, the biggest financial risk is not simply what the contractor charges. It is what the Government asks industry to build, how clearly it specifies the requirement, how effectively it manages the programme and what happens when those decisions prove wrong.
Thanks for the detailed and informative post – I didn’t realise Bowman was supposed to come in in 1995…wow!
It’s difficult.
The British military tends to see a lot of active service Vs their European allies. That active service allows issues to be found in current thinking and it would be silly to just accept stuff into service that you know is no longer suitable and puts lives at risk.
That combined with ever changes operational landscapes. In the 80s it was assumed that the next war would be on the relatively flat plains of eastern Europe. Then 90s we introduced to desert warfare and then the 00s into the hilly long distance Afgan and now back to Europe and maybe island hopping of South east Asia. Each environment has it’s own challenges and requirements.
You then have the political issues of releasing funds in a specific fiscal year of a long term contract, but every country has the same issue of moving around expenditure it balance the books at the cost of long term over all cost.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t huge amount of profiteering and corruption going on with such large governmental contracts but that is the same world wide.
Perhaps this is the Italian way of telling us that the Hybrid Navy is just a Aspiration Currently..! And a good deal futher away than they realise..!
I don’t see how Royal Navy can resolve the conundrum of high energy necessary to power large radars in various bands, eventually lasers to deal with anti carrier ballistic missiles and hypersonics to protects the carriers.
I do not think that is possible with small drones which are necessary to be able to be bought in significant numbers which are the declared intent.
There are capabilities that can only be reached by size.
Depends, I guess, what they actually get for the headline figure. Fincantieri is also state owned, so what subsidies have been placed under other headings like regional development. Anyway, I still think we should have built the Type 83. This is a good move by the Italians.
Fincantieri is not state owned. Indirectly Italian state is the majority stake holde. Fincantieri has to make all disclosures of a public company
You can buy shares in Milan stock exchange
I still think we should be investing in a bunch of T45 batch 2’s or a new destroyer until the CVV experiment conclusively demonstrates it’s capability. But for the Italians, with only two ships there will be gaps in availability.
It’s two ships, alongside their existing pair of Horizon-class DDGs. There’ll be a follow-up air defence programme to replace those two DDGs.
Correct, the Italian navy plan includes 4 destroyers. The DDX will replace the older Durand de la Penne-class (one decommissioned two year ago) and work alongside the 2 Horizon-class, until when the latter will be replaced.
That’s not what the article states….
Because the “replacement” of the Horizon-class is intended in terms of capabilities, as most advanced destroyers in the navy.
The article is not quite right.. the wording from Italy is they will serve alongside and ultimately replace the Horizons.. as the Italians are putting the horizons through a mid life upgrade in 29/30 with aster NT they are not going to bin them until the 2040s.. so you will see new AAW programs for 2 newer destroyers in the mid 2030s.. Italian Navy assumptions are around a 4 AAW destroyer force.
“That’s not what the article states….”
The article is wrong in that. These are to replace the Durand de la Penne as others are stating
And Jonathan says the Horizons are to starting to get the MLU so they reenter service staggered around 2028 and 2030 while these cruisers are supposed to be commissioned in 2033 and 2035.
I agree. We always needed a dozen air defence destroyers to have enough to escort up to 2 CVAs, but the CVA1 Ark Royal replacement was cancelled, yet we still got a dozen or so smaller T45s. The T45s were cut from 12 to 8 to 6 & we’ve barely navigated ongoing terrifyingly dangerous times where even our frigate force has been cut or allowed to fail to just 5 frigates. We have 2 big carriers, plus the need to escort & operate task groups, provide ballistic missile defence of the UK & allies, threats to The Falklands & the real possibility of Uncle Sam going bat-crap crazy & attacking our allies, yet we still plan to rebuild the RN almost to adequate for a very peaceful world. When fighting starts, we will take losses, likely significant. We simply can’t afford to have a navy so small that we could be knocked out pretty quickly.
Bigger sam/anti-drone drones load outs are vital too. Much easier today to flood the escorts with drones & missiles, so they are out of ammo for the killer strike.
Check out solutions like Rampard.
Thanks Math, that is a new one on me. Took some searching. It’s Rampart I think. A European RAM+.
Yes, the idea is to have a Ram, but not fully with missiles. It is proposing to combine « guided rockets » and missiles, like mistral, reloadable at sea and adaptable in different kind of ships.
The Italians seem to have a far better Convaetioal Procurement than us..Perhaps the fact our MOD lives so much in Fantasy land gives them an Advantage..!
Italy doesn’t spend 40% of its defence equipment budget on nuclear weapons and submarines. Warship construction is carried out by state owned companies.
Not withstanding our Nuk Availability..!!@
The Rest of the Italian Navy puts us in the Shade… And our mythical Hybrid Navy is just a Paper Dream Currently..!
You mean they didn’t shift a massive spending commitment into the main defence budget without giving the MOD an uplift to compensate for the new compulsory and ringfenced spend?
Cameron and Osborne cuckooed defence by moving nuclear into the main MOD budget, and that has severely hampered what we can afford to do in the conventional space, compared to where we were in the 90s when we still maintained extremely capable and balanced armed forces. But no government since has seen fit to reverse that decision because they would need to find a huge chunk of cash.
It’s one of those decisions, whether you agree with it or not, that has left us where we are and short of a politically seismic event, we’re unlikely to alter.
It is not what you can afford- Please explain why a mere frigate T26 laid down in 2017 will only be commissioned in 2027 or 2028. 10 or 11 years latter.
Well yes, 10 years doesn’t look good, covid or no covid! Ex-RoyalMarine above I think goes into it well. But lack of funds leads to deferred orders, resulting in lack of industrial investment (once talked about frigate factory, for example) and general malaise, ending in skill atrophy, which takes a long time to rebuild. The cancellation of the the 7th and 8th T45s followed by the back and forth over the frigate replacement (C1/C2/C3 -> 10+ 8 C1/C2 -> 13 GCS T26 -> 8+5 T26/T31) led to a 10 year delay in between constructing T45 #6 and and T26 #1.A similar problem that befell submarine construction, and armoured vehicle production.
Are either BAES or Babcock firing on all cylinders? Can they do better? Probably. But Govt has its role to play too, and dumping nuclear spending within the MOD main budget 16 years ago then ringfencing that spending commitment means Defence took a massive cut that is hard to build back from without a massive uplift in spending over multiple years.
Great picture (eyes roll)
I’d post a lengthy reply with double spacing, correct grammar and punctuation but I know that scares you and you would only accuse me of using AI 🙂
DBL Spacing! What mockery is this?
Well, I used to post short comments and sometimes I would post longer more detailed comments, but Grinch doesn’t like it when I do that and when I use double spacing, correct spelling and grammar in my longer post’s, well for some reason it scares him, he either think’s It’s witch craft or I’m using AI 😊🧙♀️
We can but hope. As ever the UK obfuscates and pontificates with ‘plans’ for enhanced/more suitable platforms instead of putting its money where its mouth is- introducing even more delays.As it was ,it will ever be thus-pathetic TBH.
The Italian purchase of these vessels, which themselves seem capable units but have the ability to work with drones/offboarded assets as a force multipliers, seems a far more sensible way of developing the Navy’s physical and technical capability. If only………..
Just proves to my mind the cancelled Type 83 iwas an opportunity missed.
I think the CCV and Type 9X drones decision is pure political smoke a mirrors.
Still not Coviced we’ve seen the last of t83..@
Considering how easily present ai agents are penetrating company and Govt defences without ever being detected and only noticed by their creators weeks and months later, I simply can’t but be concerned about a navy becoming so widely reliant upon wide ranging communications for anything to work at all, let alone collectively effective whatever the threat. Thus it strikes me that all manner of interference is going to be a very serious threat to individual ships but a networked series of mixed vessels is surely going to be by far in greater danger of being penetrated. It’s going to be an ai dominated military World and only by having equal or superior ai defences are you remotely going to be able to protect yourself. Trouble is that capability is overwhelmingly controlled by the US and China. This very possibly could leave us out in the cold especially if we wish to escape being a lapdog.
Nope I think the RN knows it needs a T45 replacement.. it’s just playing on the fact it can easily keep their Massive frigate T45s running and BAE will need a post T26 order for about 2038.. and it will have a couple of good AAW versions of the T26.. as well as the fact defence spending will be at 3.5% at that point and it will have no other calls on surface fleet capital spending.. the RN is just essentially securing a second GP frigate build from Babcock from 2030, branding it CCV and shooting in the wind that it can replace T83.. just to get around the present treasury.. knowing that in 2035 it can go back and say it needs a direct T45 replacement.. with money and BAE at its back…. Why would it sacrifice a frigate/CCV build in the early 30s for a ship that could not even be laid down until
About 2039.
Hi Jonathan, Yes the RN is far more politically savvy than the other services are, and are better able to look ahead on a long term basis. What has historically hampered them has always been the “Evil Twins’ of Treasury and Politicians.
So as the Treasury is 100% well known to hate spending money on Defence and ultimately they do have to do what the Politicians say then having an holistic long term approach is sensible.
What helps the Navy is they are well versed in knowing that anything that floats has lifespan of 20 / 30 years, replacements are cyclical and Industry / Unions are a very powerful pair of allies.
And then we have the other little matter that will start to raise its head once we see the 2/3 T26 in RN service, what is the Scottish shipbuilding Industry going to do post T26 ? And as the duty first of any PM is (apparently not this one) the defence of the U.K how is not building a T45 replacement going to effect the SNP ?
So yep give it 2/3 years and I reckon it will be “about face” and let’s build a new AAW ship (but off board extra sensors and weapons onto UAV / lean manned).
Love your Optimism on 3.5% …I’ll be happy to see 3.0% by 2030 right Now..
Healeys budget will be intresting..
T83 was cancelled ( simply becouse the Starmer Goverment could not find the money..!) and a supposed cheaper Hybrid Navy unproven idea pushed simply on Cost.grounds.!. Wheather this Concept Works out in the near future or the Quantum AI World Torpedoes it Remains to be Seen ..! Not holding my breath ..I think t83 should have Continued until Hybrid Navy Concept was Proven…!
In the end they have signed up to 3.5 by 2035 that’s now a nato set in stone.. so they will need to spend that money..
In the end with a 2.6% budget the RN has a lot of capital programs running
1) T26
2) T31
3) solid stores
4) amphibious
5) T32
6) T83
7) T9x
8) T45 update
9) last astute
10) SSBNs
11) new SSNs
12) submarine docking and dry docks
That could not all happen on 2.6-3% defence budget between now and 2030
So they have essentially binned the one that’s further away until say 2035 when almost all of those other capital lines will have gone and the defence budget will be 3.5% at that point the RN will have a finished most of the other capital lines and have a ton of cash for a new warship line.
First ship in 2033. We’d be looking at around 2040 based on the time it’s taking to build a T26. Still, we will have some toy drone boats in the 2030’s. Won’t we ?
Yeah, because everything Italian is awsome isn’t it Geoff…..Err no.
But they do seem to be good a crack out very well priced all purpose escorts and then selling some on to keep their fleet young.
In the end the RN probably have better highly specialised ships, but it has ended up with far less and each missing some of the core all purpose elements.
At the end of the day Italy has 17 frigates and destroyers all under 19 years old, with 12 being under 10 years old… I’m sure the RN would much rather be in that position… by 2030 it will have 19 with 16 being less than 15 years old.
Judging by US Chinese Japanese and now Italian ship building programs large powerful manned vessels bristling with missiles still seem in vogue. Perhaps they are not quite as infatuated by the concept of a drone fleet.
Can we just call the CCV a Type 46 Destroyer. Like the Global Combat Ship became the Type 26 Frigate.
We could call it a Super Destroyer, less fake and artificial that way.
In reality the CCV is going to be a GP frigate with some more command and control… and the only people available to build it will be Babcock… you may as well just call it the T31 B2 ( command and control frigate) or……😉 type T32.
And the RN can still have a T83/CCV mix which might be even more optimal. Do they really won’t drones to be following them around everywhere? And on long deployments, will they need to be refuelled, re-armed, maintained? There might then be a need for a drone mother/tender ship then, a reworked MRSS/MROS type?
I honestly think that come the mide 2030 when the defence budget has lots of free capital cash the RN will come out and say it needs a direct T45 replacement.
Good read of your posts and others above. A few more affordable additional ships instead of just being fixed on limiting it to “19” should be doable Doesn’t need to be all high end. Why only 5 T31s ordered, seems like a rather useless quantity. An additional 1 to 3 of these could offer a great multi-purpuse utility and availability for less than £1.5bn?
Essentially that’s why I think the CCV will inevitably be a Batch 2 T31.. gives you a run of 11 ships that have a shared set of maintenance, support and training pipelines.. it’s why I think in the end from 2038 there will be an AAW batch 2 T26, built around the Australian radar.. essentially a RN hunter.
With my long range glasses I would say the post 2050 RN crewed surface escort fleet will be
11-14 T31 and CCVs.. ( infact it would not surprise me if whatever drone command and control the CCVs get also goes into the T31 mission bay areas.. it would make sense.. as you can essentially just drop the who lot into the mission bay and make one common vessel type)
8 ASW T 26s
3-6 AAW T26s
That’s essentially 2 common hull types being supplied by 2 builders
The problem with the Hunter derivative of the T26, is that there is very little margin for weight growth. Even though they are dimensionally slightly bigger in beam than the base T26. The incorporation of the massive CEAFAR mast and arrays, has significantly reduced the amount of weight growth the ship can include in the future. BAES did have two suggestions for incorporating more VLS cells. The first to was to get rid of the mission bay, which would allow an additional 64 VLS cells, taking the total up to 96. The second option included the previous option, but also replaced the 5″ gun, with a larger VLS farm, taking the number of cells up to 128. They also said the towed array would need removing, to save weight.
In essence the T26 is too small, if you want a more rounded ship, but with a heavier anti-air capability. Like the Arleigh Burkes, perhaps one method is to gradually increase the overall size with future batch orders. Or as proposed for the original Flight 3 Burkes, include a large amidships hull plug. However, in the end it’s probably wiser to build a larger clean sheet ship, that already incorporates the size/weight/VLS requirements, but still has plenty of margin for growth.
There are many risks and vulnerabilities around using uncrewed vessels, you have identified a few here.
But for me the most glaring one is the data/command link between the CCV and its drones.
Signal attenuation in highseas, latency in combat condtitons, jamming, hijacking , damage to the CCV comms , just to list a few
On the other end of the scale if the RN doesn’t replace its B1 Rivers having an additional 1- 3 more T31s wouldn’t hurt just for a broader and useful middle tier presence if that’s what the UK wants for itself. And with like minded nations does the West want to keep the Suez, Gulf, Malacca Straits bottle necks open and East-West/North-South traffic “free” (non-tolled) flowing?
Absolutely, thats were the sensible betting money goes.
They will Absolutely be T31 batch 2 ships and called T32.
My Mum used to tell me a little numerous Scottish story. A woman and her family were watching a Scottish Battalion marching through their home time, her eldest son was one of the Soldiers. Problem was he was pretty useless at keeping in step. But his Mum was full of pride and when he went past she just “Ah look everyone’s out of step bar our Wullie”.
USA
JAPAN
SOUTH KOREA
CHINA
ITALY
FRANCE (rumoured joint project with Ditch but not due till spending on CVN peaks).
All building bigger and heavier AAW ships with far more missiles.
UK Cancelled theirs and announced something non of the others are even trying.
They must surely all be wrong 🤪
That’s because I think the RN and MOD are playing the treasury at its own game..
1) the RN knows very well it can keep its T45s running without issues till 2045+ hell they were not even planning on putting aster 30NT on them till 2032… so the whole out of service starting 2035 was always a joke.
2) the Uk has no capacity to start building a high end AAW ship until BAE launch the last 2 T26s some time after 2038.
3) Australia are already getting BAE to do the design work on a 10,000 AAW version of the T26 so we don’t even need to bother with that… if we use Australias radar..
4) the RN need more hulls in the mid 2035s more than they need to specifically replace the T45… but how could it get the treasury to fund it 😉 and the only place that can build a warship from 2030 only has a GP design and must have an order to stay open 😉
5) BAE will definitely need an order for a large complex warship to be laid down about 2038 😉 or they will have to close down the yard
6) defence spending will be up to 3.5% by 2035 and the RN will to all appearances have no major new Capital funding programmes 😉
I pretty much guarantee..
1) the RN will show the need to extend the T45s into the 2040s
2) after the CCV is safely ordered from Babcock ( because it has to be) the RN will reluctantly conclude in the early 2030s it must have some high end AAW destroyers to replace the T45s
3) by 2035 BAE will be screaming blue murder about keeping their Massive frigate factory in orders..
So by 2035 everyone will point out that we need to spend 3.5 % of GDP and there are no new ship orders or specific orders for BAE and can we please have an AAW destroyer or 6 otherwise someone will sink our carriers after 2045 or so cus silly autonomous boats don’t really protect against very hight end threats…
I’ve always admired your optimism…
Hi M8, It’s not optimism on Jonathan’s part it’s just a long career spent watching how Political idealism is always tempered by reality, I’ve been in the same boat since the early 1980’s.
Golden Rule since 2014 for whichever dim wit has been in No 10 / 11 has been “If you want to just be the PM of England then just muck up the Shipbuilding Industry in Scotland and watch how Independence effects you !).
It’s not so much optimism as a a paradigm.
1) you can never know the future so it’s only ever a story you make up..
2) you have no control of the future, people die today who should have lived for years and lived for years who should have died today.. but you can do things today that matter in the now and the future.
2) the mind does not know the difference between what is real and imaginary.. if you imagine an event that winds you up, it will wind you up and cause a stress response like it’s actually happened.. even though it’s a story and you don’t know the future..If you imagine the tiger is chasing you.. your body suffers a stress reaction.
3) what you cannot change you cannot change.. only focus on what you have power over..
4) but if you have power over something then actually do it don’t just think about it
So essentially thinking the worst when you don’t actually know the future is counterproductive, unless it’s something in which you can plan for and put in place actions.
That’s my advice as both a professional planner of the catastrophic, emergency worker and therapist..
So I’m positive for the future, yet I constantly assess the risks around me, I have 6 months of food, can hunt, live of the land, have 2 weeks bottled water, 2 years worth of water fillers, 1 year of fire wood and know how to and have planned how I can build a 1000 PF fallout shelter in 2 days flat… because don’t worry about a nuclear war, collapse of infrastructure etc.. just assess the possibility then undertake actions to ameliorate the risk.. then start thinking about what a nice holiday you will have or how lovely Christmas will be this year… and what a nice walk I’m having today.
So I will tend to focus on what can be the best outcome and paint that picture, While I also put in actions I can to manage the worst and make the best as likely as I can.
The MOD won’t admit that we cannot afford the much needed Type 83.
So instead they come up with the hair brained idea of having command ships and sloop sized drones.
The selling point is that we won’t need so many sailors and support/catering etc.
“The MOD won’t admit that we cannot afford the much needed Type 83.”
??! You can afford it, UK has tax levels approaching war time. You just choose to spend money in other stuff: welfare, netzero, infinite bureaucracy etc etc…
It’s interesting as originally these ships were penned in to replace the 2 Durand de la penne class destroyers not the 2 horizons as Italian navy plans were always based on 4 AAW destroyers, this was meant to be 4 horizons but when the British split of costs went up and the only build 2 keeping the Durand du la penne class as the sea longer than planned.
Now the statement is the new destroyers will “serve along side and ultimately replace the horizons.. “
Now they are planning to commission these in 2033 and 2035 ( the Italians are by far the most efficient and cost effective European warship builders). At present there is no planned out of service date for the Horizons.. but like the T45s they will be going through a very significant mid life up around 29/30 when they get fitted for Aster 30 NT.. now I just cannot see the Italians decommissioning the horizons 5 years after a massive mid life upgrade.. the Italians are not known for pissing money away by scrapping stuff early ( they are more likely to try and sell them to be honest.. they do love flogging ships).. so I honestly imagine the horizons and these will serve together into the 2040s
Now I honestly think this is a huge fucking lesson to the RN and HMG.. the Italians more than anyone have gone for a distributed air defence system.. but for them that has essentially mean:
1) give everything a very good sensor set with all new ships being ABM capable even the ASW and patrol frigates
2) give everything Aster 30 or Aster 30 NT
The down side is less magazine depth per ship… but they have more escorts and every escort also has 1-2 76mm super rapids with guided dart munitions.. ( essentially giving a 10km very large numbers guided missile envelope )
But it does mean the 2035 Italian escort fleet will be
2 DDX 14,000 ton destroyers, 48 asters 15/NT
2 horizons, 48 asters 15/NT
8 FREM 16 aster 15/30
2 FREM 16 aster 15/30NT ( and ABM capable radar)
7 PPA full 16 aster 30NT ( and ABM radar )
That’s a hell of a lot of distributed long range area defence and ABM missiles.
Their is a catch. Italy received 200Bn loan from EU.
They used these funds wisely, but not many countries will ever find themselves in such a favorable condition.
My observations on these ships:
-The intent of fighting “conventional missile, ballistic and hypersonic threats” is good and currently i don’t see necessary radar size and power for this in smaller combatants.
-Nevertheless it will not be capable of all that without new interceptors with much more performance than the recent Aster B1NT which are said to only be able to intercept ballistic missiles that have range up to 1500km when Iran is reaching 4000km and if not defeated will have all Europe in range. Yes they will still have a huge radar capability, but without weapons these destroyers will not see their capabilities completely fulfilled.
There is also the overall issue valid for all naval surface combatants, are they really survivable in the Missile Age against swarms?
Relative to Royal Navy drone navy i do not see at all how RN can have radar power to go to high end which is necessarily implied in its carrier investment. Royal Navy invests into 2 huge carriers and then goes into a sort of “Jeune École” drone navy? Do they consider that the carriers cannot survive in the Missile Age but cannot tell? Or it is more like the sign of a schizophrenic Navy?
Overall the Italians seem to have a much more coherent naval programe.
To be honest Alex I think we need to separate the Naval anti ballistic missile requirements from the land based, and we also need to seprate the land based into point defence vs wider national or even continental.
In reality naval systems are expensive as they are on essentially very costly vessels that live in the most destructive environment on the planet that humans operate in… we should not take complex systems to sea unless we must take systems to sea. So for me I would only have the anti ballistic missile systems you need to essentially point intercept ballistic warheads at terminal phase heading to and endangering your naval task force. In the end I think at present the realistic anti shipping threat as long as you don’t go to war with china is short and medium range ballistics.. but in the longer term the reason they are building this with so many A70 silos is for Aquila Hypersonic Interceptor Missile.. essentially they are building this boat for that.
So a boat with A50 answers A70 silos will cover all bases out to IRBMs in the future, the horizons and T45s were never designed to fit A70s which will limit them to Aster NT and MRBMs.
Personally I would like to see the intermediate+ Ballistic missile threat managed on land as that’s the way to go.
I think what irritates me is the UK is actually piss easy to protect against realistic IRBM threats from Russia because we have so little lane mass we know Russia could throw IRBMs at our key infrastructure in
The UK could get 2 THAAD batteries, one in the north would essentially cover the nuclear deterrent, major northern RAF bases and our core navel construction one in the south would cover Portsmouth, Plymouth and London. That’s about a 2 billion investment for massive protection.. it also means Russia could not sneak a sub strategic nuclear ballistic missile attack on the UK.. if it wants to use nuclear it would need to go all in.
Around swarm drones and missiles ect the answer to any large scale attrition attack is an old one… Guns Guns Guns… the simple truth is Italy got it very right stick 2-3 76mm supper rapids on everything.. supply each gun with dart munitions and you have a 80%+ single shot kill out to 8km killing 4 targets per minute destroyed … so 3 guns will drop 12 drones a minute from the 8km range ( optimal).. add in your 30mm cannon CIWs… that’s a massively sustained attack to go through the missiles then the guns… but I think a lot of legacy ships without significant gun armaments are going to struggle in the drone age.. I think that potential the lasers are not the way to be going.. dragon fire has a dwell time of 10 seconds to down a target.. a Dart round travels as Mach 3.5 for an instant kill..at 8 Kms the laser has twice the engagement time.. so it’s only going to manage probably 2 targets a minute. It’s one of the reasons I think the should be ripping the 4.5inch out of the T45s.
Yes I think the RN seems to be a bit confused at present.. but I have some sneaky suspicions that the RN are playing politics more than anything else.. they know they need 3 key things for the surface combanant fleet.. more bulk in the major combanant fleet ( they want more frigates ASAP) they want to be in on the drone warfare at the ground floor ( so they want their 9x fleet) they also need to replace the AAW destroyer fleet.. but essentially in the late 20s and early 30s there was no way they were getting the capital budget for all three.. infact I think they could only get it for one.. with development budget for a second… I suspect the RN looked at the variables
1) the T45 fleet can quit easily go into the 2045-50 without major issue.they were build with hull plating that could easily last 35 years and they will have all have just essentially had full power and systems Lifex.. so keeping them running is just 1 or 2 more Lloyds certification cycles.
3) the RN need more GP warships especially if they can do some AAW.. it alway said it needs 10 GP ships.
2) Babcock need work from 2030 but can only really build big GP frigates.
3) BAE could not lay down a new AAW destroyer until the very late 2030s even if the RN had the money, but will defo need that would from 2038 onwards and will be campaigning heavily from 2035 to get it.
4) Australia are essentially getting BAE to do all the design work and build them a 10,000 AAW focused version of the T45..
5) the UK have sort of agreed to start using Australian radars.. ( how convenient)
6) the RN will have no new surface vessel programmes for 2035 onward just as the defence budget hits 3.5% and there will be a massive amount of capital investment available..
Essentially the RN knows very well it cannot get all three things it needs now.. and it essentially decided to pretend it did not need an AAW destroyer knowing it can keeps its preset ones running and then get BAE to build it something like the the hunter class strait of the back of the last T26.. and that by 2035 there will be a load of money and it will only have SSNs left on its capital ledger… essentially my prediction is it will go like this…
A) in 2028/29 it will decide it will need to keep the T45s running for at least one more Lloyds cycle post 2035.
B) RN will get its first T9x boats around 2030
C) it will order its CCVs in 2030 with Babcock to keep that frigate factory running.. for cheap and easy fleet management they will essentially be a T31 with more command and control capabilities.. many an additional volume search radar to make them more AAW capable and acting a central sensor node.
D) By 2035 it will have come to the conclusion ( that it always knew) that it needs a number of very high end 10,000 AAW ships… there will be a bunfight over this but I would suggest probably gets 3 high end AAW destroyers based around the type 26 and depending on the geostrategic picture and how well the CCVs do another 3 of those.
I agree that Aquila seems to be the one this is designed for, but as usual in Europe i do not see any urgency and everything is too slow . Will it be op in 2033? i have my doubts.
A slight disagreement concerning ship ABM, i consider them also essential to protect land, special not big land mass, Italy is a sausage like country so it can all be covered by ships in Adriatic ad Ionio assuming the threat comes from East. It makes possible to move in a fast way to a better place and its position not known. Permanent and semi permanent land systems are at risk even from nearby disguised civilian trucks with drones or an atgm nlos undercover team 20km away
I suspect that Italy will order a 2nd batch of these new DDX as a follow on to replace the Horizons. Italy has always had essentially a 2 tiered approach to surface ship building.
A small high end core fleet of Destroyers plus 1 or 2 larger Helicopter or VTOL carriers, they know damn well these are too expensive for export but they have to save face to equal their traditional nemesis which is France.
A larger number of very well designed, market focussed Frigates, Amphibious ships, OPVs which they can churn out in numbers for themselves and export. In fact they are so good at it that they seem to have enlarged their Frigate Fleet in order to have a surplus stock level to supply “instant high value” orders straight off the shelf. Then they just order replacements and repeat.
Quite why they don’t just list them on EBay is a mystery “Delivery mileage only FREMM Frigates for sale, available from stock with immediate delivery”.
What may just alter the “High End” mix is the that Italy has no large Shios in order after the last Vulcano so I do wonder if they may just decide to build themselves a CVA so they can twin up with the French. EU money !
As I understand their planning, they are looking to go for a 3rd volcano ( Italian ships don’t have a lot of legs).. the new destroyers are only going to have a cruise range of 4000miles.
They are also looking to build 3 new 16,000-20,000 amphibious vessels
As for carrier.. yes the Italians already have a new carrier programme in the early stages. The “Portaerei di Nuova Generazione” is even looking at nuclear propulsion as they have a distinct early evaluation naval nuclear reactor project developing for both a future carrier and SSN… its early doors but Italy is definitely poking around the idea of a 2040-50 nuclear navy.
The reason these ships are priced reasonably for the Italian navy is that both Fincantieri and Leonardo have a large Italian government shareholding (in case of former approximately 64% and in the latter 30% (largest single shareholder)), and thus government is in a position to negotiate better prices than the UK government can with essentially it primary warship builder, BAE Systems.
The UK government divesting its equity holding in defence contractors, to follow the USA model (Trump administration is starting to change this), has resulted in price gouging on defence contracts that are no different than what we are seeing with purchases by the USA Pentagon. The major difference for the UK MOD with regards to its USA compatriot, the Pentagon, is that the USA first of all is a much larger economy and thus can pay higher prices (bigger and wealthier tax base), and secondly order larger quantities of its domestic production of armament and thus is able to get a better unit price. The UK does not purchase on the scale of the USA and thus does not get the savings or unit price reductions that come with economies of scale (volume purchases). For the UK to get the unit pricing that they are seeing with their European counterparts they need to follow the general European model where the government retains a major equity stake in these defence contractors.
Finally the government stakes in the Italian shipbuilding industry means that the government retains a focus in ensuring a healthy industry through steady defence contracts, but more importantly ensuring a competitive commercial shipbuilding and maintenance sector. Left to its own devices, purely private sector managed critical industries like defence, are “shareholder” focused which means maximization of returns to the shareholders and management over the shortest possible period. When that is no longer possible interest moves on to other industrial or business sectors where the “shareholder” return maximization strategy works.
“Finally the government stakes in the Italian shipbuilding industry means that the government retains a focus in ensuring a healthy industry through steady defence contracts, but more importantly ensuring a competitive commercial shipbuilding and maintenance sector. Left to its own devices, purely private sector managed critical industries like defence, are “shareholder” focused which means maximization of returns to the shareholders and management over the shortest possible period.”
That is not the reason. Yes the Government assures the permanence of intent of having a naval ship industry. But we know, and the British specially should remember very well what happened to its Government run industries.
One of the points of Fincantieri is acting like competitive private run company – it is in Milan stock exchange – not one that only exists to get government contracts. They are in competition all over world for huge cruise ships and specialized cable,offshore etc ships. So they have the external free market push for efficiency. Cunard current Queen Elizabeth cruise ship was build by them.
Yes indeed.. essentially what the government gets back as the major shareholder is profits.. essentially it removes most of the loss element to shareholders profits from the government contracts…
Essentially it gets all the tax back to its tax base.. workers income tax, Vat ect as well as corporation tax.. then it gets 71% of the profits back as well..it still own 71% of all growth in the company.. essentially Italy gets its ships at less than cost price.. its genius.. and the company can still raise private sector money as well as working as a profit motivated company..
Not completely true. The equipment level of British shipyard had been neglected for some years, perhaps because of privatisation. This led to price per ton being 40% in UK than in Italy or France. That was true in the 2010’s. May be the productivity gap has been closed by now.
So, the issue was not solely profit margin required by gready shareholders, but the way you construct the ship. Bah, anyway, pension costs are the nightmare of every ageing countries.
The thing to also remember is that as the 71% shareholder.. the Italian government gets back almost all the profits.. so the ships it contracts to build. Most profits back to governments.. profits from foreign sales back to government…. Its a proper socialist/capitalist hybrid.
So you would say it is Fascist? 🙂
Read about IRI Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale , Alberto Beneduce its Fascist administrator had 3 children to which he gave the following names: Idea Nuova Socialista, Italia Libera and Vittoria Proletaria…
And also look up the Socializzazione della Economia of 1943-44 by Nicola Bombacci … when the alliance with conservative monarchy was broken.
You will find that the Fascist tag have a lot of common with who uses the Fascist as an accusation…
Alex the Italians as we know were the original and best fascists.. and Italy has never really given up on fascism..
In the end Italian fascism was not born from the same warped evil as Nazi fascism… it was more simply authoritarian nationalism
“Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State” Italian fascistism was more an extension and offshoot of right wing European imperialism and exceptionalism.. and the Italians never really went away.. as the Italian state was not completely deconstructed like the third Reich.. the Italian fascist party was banned and taken apart.. but not the components parts of Italian fascism.. so in 1946 the old fascists formed a new fascist party, the Italian Social Movement.
But I’m a firm believer that not all fascists are equal.. and I personally tolerate as part of the political discourse what I would consider classic Italian fascism.. but I will call them fascists as I think you should own who you are and I in one way agree with them, but your allowed to think someone is wrong. German fascisms on the other hand is something profoundly evil, it was based essentially on the premise not of the state but of the party and the parties mission to exterminate everything it did not agree with ( Slavic peoples, Jews, communists, and many others ) it was a type of fascism based on pure evil and war not nationalism… I’m always measuring someone I consider a fascist to see if they are a classic fascist ( which I treat like a communist, just being wrong) or if they are infected with Nazisim.. gets me into trouble some times as calling people fascist tends to upset them even if they really are a classical fascist.. what they don’t seem to get is if I actually consider them unacceptable and in need of a prison sentence I would call them a Nazi… to subtle for many but an important distinction for me. If I consider you a to the unacceptable side of life.. you will get told your a Bolshevik… as tolerate none revolutionary communists as well… I’m pretty broad minded unless I think your a traitor tankie.
While i agree with your overall assessment of Italian Fascism, i am in profound disagreement concerning your putting Communism at same level. Communism is genocidal ideology like Nazism, their genocidal urges were not against races/genetic but against social classes, cultures and religions and other Communists in wrong side of a power play.
Communists murdered hundred millions of own people from Russia to Ukraine to China to Ethiopia, to Cambodja. This in widely different cultures. And murdered millions of other Communists that might only have parallel contemporarily in Islamists murdering other Muslims.
Italian Fascism certainly murdered Italians but for a dictatorship scales a rather small number. San Marino and the Vatican continued to be countries within Fascist Italy. You could live without being a Fascist, you could have a small business outside Fascism since your state was not totalitarian but authoritarian. As long as you did not defied the regime you could live having almost no political contact with it.
Communism is a totally different beast. You not only had to be a Communist but the right side of Communist for the moment or you could end in a Gulag. San Marino and the Vatican in a Communist Italy would be destroyed, its culture were to be wipeout.
Of note Jews were specially targeted by Karl Marx. Since they survived as Jews despite not having a country for so long this presented a significant challenge to Karl Marx his Socialist State, Socialist Society and Socialist Men and the absolute, totalitarian devotion that it required. Absolutely nothing else could be a source of power within Socialism.
Karl Marx which we can call a literal National-Socialist – his nation being Socialism – called outright for extermination of Jewish culture in is article. A Socialist Jew ok since it ceased to be one, so there wasn’t the genetic component of Nazism. But no one could be anything else than a Socialist.
One aspect of root destruction that Communism did is how low the cultural output of its countries.
And its idea remains the most murderous European export….
Hi Alex there are other forms of communism that don’t include the revolutionary based communism of Marx, Lenin and the Bolshevik, as I said I reject the concepts of revolutionary communism in the same light as National Socialism. I consider these totalitarian far left and right movements to be a scourge on humanity.
But there are a number of forms of socialism that are not revolutionary
The UK particularly was a home to a lot of none revolutionary communist movements, until the whole show was essentially spoilt by the rise of revolutionary communism and the shitshow that was the Russian imperialist version of communism.. not only revolutionary but international.
Britain was the true home of communism before the Marxist movement stole and warped it. So a good read on the true communism and not the late 19c early 20c travesty can be found in 17c- early 19c British movements, the Pre-Marxist agrarian/utopian communism of Britain.
Sir Thomas More published Utopia in 1516, essentially the first known works on a truly egalitarian/equal society, with common ownership the was the first development of Utopian communism.
Then the civil war (1650) saw the work of Gerrard Winstanley and the formation of the Diggers who promoted the concept of communal cultivation of common land, which essentially representing the early form of agrarian communism.
The Chartist Movement of the 1830s and 40s was essential a proto democratic socialist movement, that demanded reform of suffrage and political systems to make them egalitarian, with the James Bronterre O’Brien side of the charter moment also wanting land ownership reforms around community land ownership.
At the same time you had Owenism which essentially focused on the establishment of utopian communities of collective ownership.
Finally all this morphed into Fabian socialism, a very British leftist movement that started in London in 1884. It promotes a slow and totally peaceful change to socialism through laws and elections instead of violent revolution.. it formed the basis of the Labour Party and modern UK socialism,which intrinsically rejects such things as revolutionary change and is fundamentally a democratic movement that believes a stable society is best expressed in a mixed economy.
Essentially the original communist movements developed chiefly in the UK and they were focused on small communities with joint ownership and the development of fair and equal representation of all.
These British utopian and agrarian communist movements were also profoundly based around Christian values and religious freedom.. infact their guiding values were based around a more focused Christian lifestyle with Moores early work in the 16c based around Christian humanism and monastic ideals.
Essentially communism is not inherently the monster that was created by Marx and developed to its extreme by Lenin. If it had been entirely left to the British.. communism would have simply been more collectively own business like John Lewis and the co-op, more universal healthcare systems and a load of collective farming and factory communities all structured around a free democratic society with full suffrage…
Jonathan you cannot talk that way about Communism and then specify that you meant a rarity when called: pre-Marx Communism, Even less when the theme was WW2. Most people would think you meant Marx Communism.
Still, that Communism is also coercive and Human Rights Declaration says specifically that Property is a right of persons either individually and associated.
Instead i do not have problems at all with what i call Libertarian Communism where free people freely pool their resources and work in communal way as agreed upon themselves. They are not coercing anyone. The fact that this rarely happen made me since as a child doubt the honesty of the Left. Do socialism yourselves, show how it is better.
Instead what i saw and still see is only in the emphasis to force people that aren’t socialist to be.
In 1975 after Portuguese revolution Moçambique got independency and nationalized all land.
When Botswana declared independency in 60’s contrary to almost all other countries that stopped being colonies it did not went for Socialism, it choose to be closer to the western way.
Today GPD PPP
Botswana $20000
Moçambique $1400
This inequality of outcomes between countries less than 1000km distant in huge Africa is more than 10x. It is certainly not explained in The Guardian obsessed with slavery that colonial countries actually stopped 150 tears ago.
Botswana is in fact a country journalists always full of opinions prefer to not talk about.
I just don’t see communism as always meaning that authoritarian nightmare in the same way as I don’t see the far right as alway meaning the same thing…
I essentially acknowledge and accept that both the far right and far left have non authoritarian elements and I am quite happy with those.. I’m pretty tolerant as long as you not ethnically cleansing people, an Ethno Nationalist or trying to set up some authoritarian/totalitarian government, I’m quite content for you to have your view and be an active participant in the discussion…
Im pretty happy with most political debate because I’m happy to defend mine,because in reality my core belief is one of those as you describe them “libertarian communist’s” … so I tend to see them as more important than just a historic anomaly of Anglo-Saxon “ you don’t control us” mentality .. I’m a Co-operative member, I shop in John Lewis over any corporate model if I can and I have always chosen to work for non profit organisations. Effectively I’m a libertarian democratic communist.. but in no way associates with and actively dislikes all revolutionary communist moments and as the world is not in a place to accept libertarian or utopian communism Im very happy fundamentally supporting centre mixed economy democracy.
But I do take umbrage with the whole communism is what Marx and Lenin says it is.. just like that evil shite stain Hitler does not define the whole of the far right.
Well, we have the same type of economy here. DCNS is a national company. And for France to work, liberalism as we have seen it in the last 30 years is clearly not the way. We ended up closing far too many factories, loosing invaluable amount of skill, for no reasons. The economic output of the private sector is at best questionable. Too many factories have been moved abroad. Open borders and not tarrifs have created an economic no man’s land, trade deficit at an unimaginable scale and profits going abroad in so called « fiscal paradise » that are just an economic evil for most. So no, the way France is running is not optimal, because management are subjectzd to foreign extorsion. We must put an end to this madness.
I must say these are some interesting conversations, especially as im running a 38 degree temp and a bit of my face..
I’m in agreement neoliberalism has essentially failed, you cannot let the market decide on an international level as the market will then inevitably destroy your country if the markets dictate that’s what needed. So screw neoliberalism. Personally I’m all up for a bit of nationalist capitalism and economic nationalism.. but I would do that at the European level, then invite others in if they want to play by our rules..
It’s where I think the EU made a wrong turn and why the UK ended up binning Europe..
So, yet another Navy commits to a 15,000 tonne class heavyweight very high end air defence Destroyer, while the RN carries on with its cheap and very limited mothership and even cheaper drone ship fantasy…. 🤔
If the published specs are accurate, these ships look short ranged at 4000 nm. The T31 has 9000nm at 18kts. Designed primarily for Mediterranean operation but not really suitable for the Atlantic.
RN Town class cruisers managed just fine with a range of @5000 miles