30. September 2016

FREMM Alpino - Final Official Acceptance: the fifth FREMM delivered to the Italian Navy

On 30th September 2016, the Italian FREMM frigate “Alpino”, so called in honour of the “Alpini” Corps of the Italian Army, was delivered by OCCAR to the Italian Navy. The ceremony at Muggiano shipyard (La Spezia) was attended by the OCCAR Director, the OCCAR FREMM Programme Manager, Italian Navy Senior Officers, the Orizzonte Sistemi Navali CEO and senior representatives from Fincantieri and Leonardo companies’.

Italian Ship (ITS) Alpino is the fifth FREMM frigate delivered to Italian Navy and the fourth in Anti Submarine Warfare version. The sixth ship (ITS “Rizzo”) is in the final testing and outfitting phase (with delivery foreseen in February 2017) and the following ships (all of them in construction phase) will be delivered at the rate of one per year up to April 2021. Previously delivered ships are managed by OCCAR in their “In Service Support” phase. 

The OCCAR Director and the other speakers of the Italian Navy and Industry, empasised the extraordinary success obtained with the first delivery by industry without any uncompleted activity in the history of Italian Navy (and surely many others). All Engineering Change Proposals made by Industry, OCCAR or the Italian Navy from lessons identified during operational activities had been implemented before the delivery of the ship and the development and production process has been continuously optimised, implementing smart solutions and integrating any input by the Italian Navy. After a short period of training the ship will be deployed on operational activities. These results demonstrate the maturity of the programme and the confidence of the Italian Navy in this class of ship, already used on many occasions as flagship for essential operations.

The accomplishment of such a success is further evidence of the highly responsive OCCAR procurement process, based on the continuously improving best practice model which gives great flexibility to the partnership between governmental and industrial stakeholders. The FREMM frigates Programme remains an incredible success story in terms of the management of complex defence systems, as OCCAR Director Tim Rowntree underlined in his speech: ”So this success is a success for all of us, including our excellent European industry, who have risen to the challenge of joining us on our great journey to keep Europe at the forefront of key Defence capabilities to protect our European citizens, in an uncertain world of many threats, for decades to come”.

The Alpino performed a demonstration at sea of some of its operational performances to special guests and the Italian press on 29th September.

OCCAR-EA team onboard Alpino