Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri has delivered Pietro Venuti, the third U212A Todaro-class submarine, to the Italian Navy at its shipyard of Muggiano (La Spezia) on July 6.
The submarine is part of a series of four units the Italian Central Unit for Naval Armament – NAVARM has ordered from Fincantieri.
The first two vessels of the class, Salvatore Todaro (S526) and Scirè (S527), were commissioned in 2006 and 2007, respectively. Pietro Venuti’s twin unit Romeo Romei started sea trials in March 2016 and is scheduled to be commissioned later this year.
Fincantieri says the Pietro Venuti is entirely built with amagnetic material, using the most modern silencing techniques to reduce its acoustic signature.
The submarine has a surface displacement of 1,509 tonnes, an overall length of 55.9 meters, a maximum diameter of 7 meters, and can exceed 16 knots underwater. It has a 27-person crew.
Venuti is part of the second pair of submarines to be built in chronological order, and it is just about one year ahead of the Romeo Romei, currently under construction at the shipyard of Muggiano. These vessels will replace the Navy’s Prini and Pelosi submarines (Sauro class – third series), built in the late 1980s.
The submarine construction programme is the continuation of the project begun in 1994 in cooperation with the German Submarine Consortium, which has already led to the construction of six vessels for Germany and two for Italy – the Todaro and the Scirè in the past years.
Venuti is equipped with a silent propulsion system based on fuel cell technology (also known as air-independent propulsion AIP), producing energy through an oxygen-hydrogen reaction, independent therefore from external oxygen, ensuring a submerged range three to four times higher than the conventional battery-based systems.