Italian Nuclear Powered Ship Designs

archipeppe said:
Not longer.
Italian Navy is becoming full "blue water Navy" and recently demonstrated it the attack naval group leaded by our flagship Conte di Cavour operating into indo-pacific scenery.

This is Italy's new posture.
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Italia rules the waves ! :p :p :p
 
Archibald said:
Italia rules the waves ! :p :p :p
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Not exactly.

The new geopolitical asset imposes not only to Italy (but also to France for instance) to protect naval routes far beyond Suez, well into the Red Sea and beyond.

This means new capability of projection not limited to the Mediterranean basin.
In future the Italian Navy will fully achieve it with 3 Aircaft Carriers (one of them maybe nuclear), new FFGs and PPAs and new class of submarines (maybe also nuclear) and more F-35s.

There are other nations operating into the Meditarraean sea that foresee the same scenario?
 
Last edited:
Spain ? Juan Carlos is a massive ship too, albeit no other one seems to be in the books so far.
 
I took these photos at the Naval History Museum in Venice. It shows the SSN design, a related Polaris SSBN design, and a sketch of the reactor plant (hung upside down). It's clear that the Italian Navy was provided something like a booklet of general plans for the Skipjack as the overall configuration is very similar to. Probably the plans were for the Skipjack specifically as the ship service turbine generators had reduction gears (only she and the Dreadnought had SSTGs with reduction gears; all other S5W submarines had direct drive SSTGs).

One curious change in the Italian reactor plant is that the main engines are "backwards," i.e., the exhausts for their ahead stages are aft of the astern stages. This means that the main engine exhausts are farther from the ship service turbine exhausts, making the main condensers a bit longer than necessary.

More information on these designs can be found in the excellent article by Michele Cosentino in Warship 2019. The bow arrangements, not shown well in these images, is radically different than the original Skipjack design.
 

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Vepr157 said:
I took these photos at the Naval History Museum in Venice. It shows the SSN design, a related Polaris SSBN design, and a sketch of the reactor plant (hung upside down). It's clear that the Italian Navy was provided something like a booklet of general plans for the Skipjack as the overall configuration is very similar to.
Click to expand...
Excellent photos thank you.
The drawing in the left is the cutaway of Guglielmo Marconi class while the one on the right was a Marconi's derivative SSBN armed with ALFA missiles in its vertical tubes.
 
Vepr157 said:
Polaris, not Alfa. The Alfa missile came about a decade after these SSN/SSBN designs.
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Yes and not.
Initially was conisdered the Polaris A1 (which was tested on the old Garibaldi crusier) but considering that the SSBN would take at least a decade of development, once in service it would be anyway equipped with the indigenous SNIA BPD/Aeritalia ALFA.
 
archipeppe said:
Yes and not.
Initially was conisdered the Polaris A1 (which was tested on the old Garibaldi crusier) but considering that the SSBN would take at least a decade of development, once in service it would be anyway equipped with the indigenous SNIA BPD/Aeritalia ALFA.
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If the SSBN design was still being considered around 1970, sure. But this drawing was made around 1960 when Italian SLBMs did not exist.
 

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