The Morosini is eastbound. On Thursday evening, the Italian Navy’s Thaon di Revel-class offshore patrol vessel began its five-month deployment by heading towards Indo-Pacific waters, where it will take part in patrolling activities alongside allied navies.
- Its deployment – which the Italian Navy’s Chief of Staff, Admiral Enrico Credendino, anticipated to us – comes as Rome looks to the Indo-Pacific area with increasing attention.
- The Morosini, said Admiral Credendino, will sail “in an area where our Navy has been missing for several years, a world that we know little about, but in which there is a strong strategic, military, diplomatic and political interest.”
Charting the trip. According to Naval News, the Morosini will call in fifteen ports of fourteen countries across the area up to Japan and South Korea “to promote freedom of navigation and the respect of international law of the sea alongside the conduction of naval diplomacy and maritime security missions.”
- The Italian Navy vessel will also participate in Operations Atalanta and Agenor; the latter is under the European-led Maritime Awareness in the Strait of Hormuz (EMASoH).
- The Morosini’s potential campaign in the same area of the flagship Cavour aircraft carrier and its group (which is also headed to the Indo-Pacific) “it is not under planning for the time being,” said the Chief of the Fleet, Admiral Aurelio De Carolis, to a direct question from the media.
- Still, that does not contradict the indication of Admiral Giuseppe Berutti Bergotto, Deputy Chief of the Navy General Staff, who noted that the Morosinin and the Cavour will sail in the same waters.
Mission teamwork. In greeting the departing vessel and its crew, led by Commander Giovanni Monno, the Navy’s Chief of Staff sought to emphasise that the Morosini’s deployment will allow for “developing training synergies with foreign navies such as Japan, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States,” while guaranteeing high visibility for Italy and its Navy, which will “show [its] flag in very complicated waters, in some ways even more untangled than those of the Mediterranean.”
