Italian Navy Renewal Program Begins

The steel cutting ceremony of the LSS logistic support unit’s bow section was held today at Fincantieri’s shipyard in Castellammare di Stabia. Construction works, therefore, officially started on the first unit, as provided in the renewal plan of the Italian Navy’s fleet, which has been commissioned to Fincantieri.

The section is 94 meters long, 24 meters wide, 16.3 meters high, weighing about 4,100 tons. In the coming months it will be launched and transported by sea to the shipyard in Muggiano (La Spezia), where it will be assembled to set up the entire unit with the stern section, whose steel cutting ceremony took place on February 9 in the shipyard of Riva Trigoso (Sestri Levante, Genoa). The delivery of the LSS is scheduled in 2019.

The beginning of the construction also involves RINA Services. The experience gained in a number of past projects and the close cooperation between RINA and the Italian Navy at international level for the development of the Naval Ship Code (a standard equivalent to the SOLAS - Safety of Life at Sea, but applicable to naval vessels, which has been  developed by the International Naval Safety Association which includes also RINA, the Italian Navy and the main NATO’s Navies) have allowed to refine the cooperation forms, overcoming the traditional concept of class and taking greater account of the specific technical and operational needs of the Navy.

The LSS will be classified by RINA pursuant international conventions about prevention of pollution regarding the more traditional aspects, like the ones of the MARPOL Convention, as well as those not yet mandatory, as the Hong Kong Convention about ship recycling.

The LSS is a vessel that provides logistics support to the fleet, endowed with hospital and healthcare capabilities thanks to the presence of a fully equipped hospital, complete with operating rooms, radiology and analysis rooms, a dentist’s office and hospital rooms capable of hosting up to 12 seriously injured patients. The ship is capable of combining capacity to transport and transfer to other transport vessels used for liquids (diesel fuel, jet fuel, fresh water) and solids (emergency spare parts, food and ammunitions) and to perform at sea repairs and maintenance work for other vessels. The defense systems are limited to the capacity of command and control in tactical scenarios, communications and dissuasive, nonlethal defense systems. The vessel is also capable of embarking more complex defense systems and becoming an intelligence and electronic war platform.