National Armaments Director: 'Free Garibaldi ship to Indonesia? It would cost more to scrap it'

Question: is there room for the transfer of the Garibaldi ship to the Indonesian navy to take place not free of charge, as envisaged in the draft decree of the Ministry of Defence submitted to the parliamentary commissions of the House and Senate, but subject to payment of a fee? 'I believe so because the word is in the hands of the commissions, i.e. we have done all the preparatory work, after which the ship will be sold free of charge where and only if the commissions give a binding opinion yes'. The indication came from the National Armaments Director,Giacinto Ottaviani. The admiral spoke at a hearing on Tuesday 24 March before the Senate Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee. The opinion of the competent commissions, essentially a green light to the transfer of the ship free of charge to Indonesia, should have arrived by Monday 16 March, but the oppositions, with the PD and Five Star Party in the front row, obtained a postponement of the vote.

'We did not promise anything, because we could not,' Ottaviani explained. It all stemmed from a series of letters of strong interest. They have been arriving since July, but I do not have the authority to give the ship away free of charge. I have only taken note in a form of courtesy,' he said. It is in a "framework of profitable commercial cooperation between Italia and Indonesia that the latter has for some time expressed interest in acquiring various equipment and in particular the ship Garibaldi, which has been placed in a reserve position since 31 December 2024 due to manifest technical-operational obsolescence," the admiral explained. The Indonesian Ministry of Defence has expressed its willingness to acquire it in a letter to me. I would like to emphasise that any communication received in the course of the interlocutions, sometimes with unilaterally suggested proposals and agendas, have never been approved in their entirety or acknowledged by me in their contents, but due to the need to thoroughly evaluate such proposals with the various defence components competent for the matter'. Ottaviani pointed out that 'no other state has so far asked for the Garibaldi. The options are to dispose of it, with the costs that have been explained to us of 19 million for preparing it for disposal, or to sell it free of charge to the only one that has come forward so far'.

The National Armaments Director emphasised that the assessments of the 'inter-force technical round table', set up in December and chaired by the Chief of Defence Staff, had shown 'that the free transfer of the Garibaldi ship, whose residual inventory value is 54 million, is the most convenient solution', because it makes it possible to avoid the 'daily maintenance costs estimated at around 5 million per year' and the costs of demolition. The sale, he added, makes it possible to transform 'a certain burden into an opportunity for international cooperation'. 'Nave Garibaldi,' he added, 'is a daily liability, because it needs more than 100 people on board for maintenance, keeping it safe. As long as the ship floats it needs maintenance." "The inventory value," the admiral recalled, "is a purely theoretical value, it is certainly not the economic value, so the sum of everything on the Garibaldi has a value of 54 million. Inventory value means going on board this 14,000-tonne, 185-metre carrier and going to estimate the bereavement value: of the cabinet, of the cupboard, of the table that once desoldered has its own value'.

As for the possibility of considering alternatives to selling the ship, such as turning it into a museum, Ottaviani pointed out that this operation would be particularly expensive. "Taking a cue from the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum in New York (a museum of maritime and military history consisting of a collection of museum ships, ed.), if one were to decide today to turn the Garibaldi into a museum, one would have to spend around 100 million, for example to remove the architectural barriers, the Garibaldi,' he recalled, 'is all about architectural barriers, there are museum standards to be met that entail investment. For example, the Garibaldi as a warship, a military ship, has sea intakes that suck in water 24 hours a day. It is a ring that covers the whole ship. And from this ring there are myriad spills that can bring water to where there is a fire. Now,' continued the National Armaments Director, 'if this ship is transformed into a museum, it is clear that these sea intakes must all be closed off, that a fire-fighting conditioning system typical of a museum must be put in place, which is not that of a military ship'. It follows that 'to transform the Garibaldi ship into a museum it takes 100 million, one-off at the beginning, plus it takes about 35 million a year to manage it. These are the expenses'. Ottaviani recalled that the Intrepid 'manages to dispose of these 35 million a year with about one million visitors a year, because it is in New York. The boundary conditions are different from those in Italy, so with one million visitors it fills 85 per cent of this 35 million. This is the situation'.

Why did Indonesia come forward? "It is the largest archipelagic state in the world," the admiral emphasised, "it has more than 18,000 islands, 3,000 of them are uninhabited, and it is also an earthquake-prone territory, so a Garibaldi with minimal maintenance activities, for which they have allocated some 400-420 million, becomes for them a ship with sanitary capabilities as well. It is clear that a ship can be the instrument with which they bring relief as soon as possible.