Indonesia’s First Aircraft Carrier: Ex-Italian Warship Giuseppe Garibaldi to Become KRI Gajah Mada, Reshaping Indo-Pacific Naval Power

(DEFENCE SECURITY ASIA) — Indonesia is on the cusp of a watershed naval transformation as the decommissioned Italian carrier ITS Giuseppe Garibaldi prepares for handover to Jakarta, a transfer poised to recalibrate the naval power balance across maritime Southeast Asia and the wider Indo-Pacific theatre.

The vessel, expected to be renamed KRI Gajah Mada after the legendary 14th century Majapahit military commander, will become the Tentara Nasional Indonesia-Angkatan Laut’s (TNI-AL) first-ever fixed-wing-capable carrier platform, ending decades of reliance on smaller amphibious and landing platform dock vessels for power projection.

Navy Chief Admiral Muhammad Ali has confirmed that the naming decision remains under review, with Gajah Mada and Panglima Sudirman both under active consideration pending final presidential-level approval.

The acquisition transforms Indonesia into only the second Southeast Asian state after Thailand to operate a carrier-type hull, a symbolic and operational milestone that instantly alters regional threat perception calculations from Singapore to Canberra.

As of mid-July 2026, engineers and naval planners are racing against a compressed timeline to prepare Lanal Lampung, the designated homeport, before the ship’s targeted arrival around October 5, coinciding deliberately with Indonesian Armed Forces Day.

This is not merely a hardware upgrade; it is a deliberate strategic signal from President Prabowo Subianto that Jakarta intends to project blue-water credibility commensurate with its archipelagic geography and its ambitions within ASEAN’s shifting security architecture.

The transfer itself is structured as a government-to-government grant, with Rome absorbing an estimated €54 million in preparation costs rather than incurring roughly €5 million annually in continued maintenance or costly scrapping of the retired flagship.

Jakarta, in turn, must shoulder the far heavier financial burden of refit, modernization, training, and integration, with estimates reaching approximately USD450 million, equivalent to roughly RM1.8 billion, financed substantially through foreign loan mechanisms.

Crucially, the ship will arrive with only propulsion, basic safety, and habitability systems intact for the transit voyage, meaning its original offensive weapons suite has been stripped and full combat capability remains an open strategic question for years ahead.

Analysts caution that in its initial operational phase, the carrier will likely function as a command-and-control and humanitarian logistics platform rather than a genuine power-projection strike asset comparable to larger blue-water navies.

Yet even in this constrained configuration, the acquisition fundamentally alters Indonesia’s maritime domain awareness, disaster-response reach, and command architecture across an archipelago spanning more than seventeen thousand islands and critical chokepoints including the Malacca and Sunda Straits.

The following analysis examines five critical dimensions of this acquisition: the infrastructure race at Lampung, the strategic calculus behind the Italy-Indonesia transfer, the operational and combat capability gap, the regional power-balance implications, and the unresolved questions shaping the carrier’s long-term trajectory.

The Lampung Infrastructure Race: Engineering a Carrier-Capable Homeport Under Time Pressure

Lanal Lampung, including the adjoining Lanal Ratai facility, has been designated as the primary berthing and sustainment hub for Indonesia’s first carrier, triggering an unprecedented infrastructure sprint across the Sumatran naval base complex.

Seabed dredging operations are underway to achieve the draft clearance required for a vessel displacing roughly 13,850 tons at full load, a depth threshold far exceeding requirements for Indonesia’s existing frigate and corvette fleet.

Engineers are simultaneously widening and reinforcing mooring and berthing infrastructure, recognizing that inadequate quay strength or insufficient fendering could risk structural damage during high-tonnage docking manoeuvres.

Electrical power infrastructure upgrades are being fast-tracked to support shore-based systems capable of sustaining a carrier’s hotel loads, including climate control, weapons-readiness systems, and eventual flight-deck support equipment.

Additional construction is proceeding on Pulau Kelagian, encompassing headquarters facilities, docking infrastructure, and command nodes intended to integrate the carrier into Indonesia’s broader western fleet command structure.

A formal inspection of these works was conducted in early June 2026, reflecting the TNI AL’s institutional urgency to validate readiness benchmarks ahead of the ship’s transit arrival.

This compressed construction timeline carries inherent schedule risk, since dredging, structural reinforcement, and power-grid upgrades typically require multi-year execution windows in comparable regional naval infrastructure projects.

Should Lampung’s readiness slip beyond the October target, Jakarta faces a strategically embarrassing scenario in which its flagship acquisition arrives without an adequately prepared home base, undermining the symbolic timing tied to Armed Forces Day.

Beyond Lampung itself, the Navy is simultaneously preparing multiple auxiliary bases, indicating an intent to disperse carrier-support logistics across several nodes rather than concentrating all sustainment risk in a single facility.

This distributed basing posture suggests early recognition within TNI AL planning circles of the vulnerability a single homeport creates under any future contingency involving precision strike or blockade scenarios in the Malacca Strait approaches.

Rome’s Calculus: Why Italy Chose a Free Transfer Over Scrapping a Cold War-Era Flagship

The Giuseppe Garibaldi’s transfer to Indonesia is structured as an outright grant rather than a commercial sale, a decision reflecting Rome’s own cost-benefit calculation following the vessel’s reserve status since late 2024.

Commissioned in 1985 after nearly four decades of continuous service as Italy’s first full-length flight-deck warship, the Garibaldi had become a depreciating strategic liability once superseded by newer Italian naval aviation assets.

By transferring the hull under a government-to-government framework, Italy avoids an estimated €5 million in annual upkeep costs while also sidestepping the environmental and financial burden associated with formally decommissioning and scrapping a Cold War-era gas-turbine warship.

The Italian Senate’s parliamentary ratification of the transfer in March and April 2026 formalized what officials describe as a deepening defence-industrial relationship between Rome and Jakarta, extending well beyond this single hull transfer.

Fincantieri, Italy’s state-linked shipbuilder, has already supplied Indonesia with the frigates KRI Brawijaya and KRI Prabu Siliwangi, establishing an existing procurement and technical-support relationship that materially reduces integration friction for the carrier project.

This pre-existing industrial familiarity gives PT PAL, Indonesia’s state shipbuilder, a functioning technical bridge to Italian systems architecture as it undertakes the carrier’s extensive refit and modernization program domestically.

For Rome, the arrangement also generates soft-power dividends, reinforcing Italy’s defence-export credibility within the lucrative and expanding Indo-Pacific arms market at a moment of intensifying competition among European suppliers.

For Jakarta, the grant structure dramatically lowers the acquisition’s upfront capital threshold compared to procuring a new-build carrier, a project that would otherwise cost several billion dollars and consume a decade or more of shipyard capacity.

However, the free transfer does not eliminate the far larger downstream costs of weapons-system integration, sensor modernization, and helicopter air-wing procurement, which analysts estimate will ultimately exceed the value of the hull itself.

This financing structure therefore represents a calculated trade: Italy monetizes a depreciating asset into diplomatic capital, while Indonesia accepts a lower entry cost in exchange for absorbing the technical risk of modernizing a foreign-designed hull without direct Italian operational support during the critical early years.

Capability Gap: Why KRI Gajah Mada Will Not Be a Combat Carrier for Years

The Giuseppe Garibaldi will be handed over stripped of its original combat suite, meaning the Sea Sparrow and Aspide surface-to-air missile systems, Oto Melara Dardo guns, torpedo tubes, and Otomat anti-ship missiles will not transfer with the hull to Indonesia.

This leaves Jakarta with a bare, propulsion-capable platform requiring an entirely new self-defence and sensor architecture before the vessel can credibly operate in any contested maritime environment.

Indonesia’s four GE-Avio LM2500 gas turbines, generating approximately 81,000 horsepower and enabling speeds up to thirty knots, remain intact and will require minimal modification, representing the ship’s single greatest inherited operational asset.

With hangar space for roughly sixteen aircraft and an original air wing built around AV-8B Harrier jump-jets, Indonesia faces a critical decision point regarding whether to pursue fixed-wing V/STOL aircraft or commit exclusively to a rotary-wing and unmanned aviation concept.

Current indications point toward the latter path, with TNI AL already constructing a full-scale simulated flight deck, measuring approximately 180 by 33 metres, at Juanda Naval Air Station in Sidoarjo for AS565 Panther helicopter training.

This training investment signals that Indonesia’s near-term air wing concept is centred on rotary-wing logistics, medical evacuation, and command-and-control support rather than fixed-wing strike aviation requiring far more complex catapult or ski-jump integration.

Separately, reported interest in integrating Turkish-made Bayraktar TB3 naval unmanned combat aerial vehicles suggests Jakarta may be pursuing an asymmetric aviation concept that sidesteps the enormous cost of crewed fixed-wing carrier aviation altogether.

Approximately one hundred Indonesian personnel are slated for specialized training in Italy, including instruction conducted during the transit voyage itself, against a total projected crew requirement exceeding five hundred sailors.

This training gap represents a significant near-term readiness constraint, since operating a vessel of this displacement and complexity demands specialized damage-control, flight-deck, and engineering expertise that Indonesia’s navy has never previously needed to maintain.

Until weapons integration, air-wing selection, and crew certification are fully resolved, KRI Gajah Mada will function primarily as a humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, and command platform rather than a genuine strike carrier comparable to regional or global blue-water benchmarks.

Regional Power Balance: How a Non-Combat Carrier Still Reshapes Indo-Pacific Deterrence Optics

Even absent a fully restored combat suite, the psychological and diplomatic impact of Indonesia fielding any carrier-type hull instantly recalibrates how regional militaries and foreign ministries assess Jakarta’s strategic weight within ASEAN and the broader Indo-Pacific security architecture.

Indonesia’s emergence as only the second Southeast Asian carrier-operating nation after Thailand introduces a new benchmark that may accelerate latent carrier or large-deck amphibious ambitions among other regional militaries monitoring Jakarta’s progress closely.

For neighbouring states bordering the Malacca and Sunda Straits, a carrier-based Indonesian command platform enhances Jakarta’s maritime domain awareness precisely along chokepoints through which a significant share of global seaborne trade and energy shipments transit daily.

Beijing’s regional naval planners will almost certainly factor an Indonesian carrier, however limited in initial combat capability, into broader assessments of Jakarta’s willingness and capacity to assert sovereignty claims within its exclusive economic zone near the Natuna Islands.

The platform’s declared primary role in Military Operations Other Than War signals an Indonesian strategic culture that continues prioritizing disaster response and humanitarian logistics over overt power projection, a posture consistent with Jakarta’s long-standing non-aligned foreign policy tradition.

Nevertheless, any humanitarian-postured carrier retains inherent dual-use military value, since command-and-control infrastructure, helicopter logistics chains, and large-deck aviation experience directly transfer into future combat-capable configurations should regional threat perceptions escalate.

Washington and Canberra are likely to view the acquisition favourably insofar as it strengthens Indonesia’s capacity for coalition humanitarian and disaster-response operations, an area of established trilateral cooperation across the region.

Simultaneously, the acquisition deepens Jakarta’s defence-industrial entanglement with Italy and, by extension, NATO-aligned supply chains, subtly diversifying Indonesia’s traditionally non-aligned procurement portfolio away from exclusive reliance on Russian or domestic platforms.

This diversification carries long-term interoperability implications, since integrating Italian propulsion and eventual Western sensor or weapons packages could ease future joint exercises with United States, Australian, or European naval task groups operating in the region.

Ultimately, the carrier’s greatest near-term strategic value lies not in kinetic capability but in the signalling function it performs, demonstrating Jakarta’s institutional intent to eventually field a genuine blue-water navy commensurate with its geographic scale and economic ambitions.

Unresolved Variables: Cost Overruns, Delays, and the Long Road to Full Operational Capability

Despite the compressed October 2026 target, several Italian planning documents reportedly point toward a finalization timeline extending as late as December 2026, indicating genuine uncertainty regarding the transfer’s precise completion date.

Schedule risk is compounded by the scale of concurrent construction at Lampung, where dredging, berthing reinforcement, and power infrastructure upgrades must all reach completion simultaneously without any single workstream lagging behind the others.

Refit and modernization costs, currently estimated near Rp7.2 trillion, equivalent to roughly USD450 million or RM1.8 billion, carry substantial upside risk given the historical tendency of naval refit programs worldwide to exceed initial budget projections.

Financing this refit substantially through foreign loans introduces fiscal exposure for Jakarta, raising questions about debt servicing obligations tied to a platform generating no direct commercial return and requiring sustained annual operating expenditure.

Regional shipping disruptions, administrative delays between Italian and Indonesian bureaucracies, or unforeseen technical complications during the transit voyage could each independently push the carrier’s operational debut beyond the symbolically significant Armed Forces Day deadline.

PT PAL’s capacity to execute a refit of this technical complexity domestically remains an open question, since Indonesia’s state shipyard has limited prior experience integrating foreign-designed large-deck naval aviation platforms of comparable displacement and systems density.

The eventual weapons and sensor suite selection, whether sourced from Italy, other European partners, or diversified across multiple suppliers, will materially determine both the final cost envelope and the interoperability ceiling of the completed platform.

Crew training remains a multi-year undertaking, since certifying five hundred or more sailors across engineering, flight-deck, damage-control, and command disciplines cannot be compressed regardless of political pressure to declare the carrier operational quickly.

Analysts should therefore treat the October 2026 arrival as a symbolic milestone marking the beginning of a multi-year integration process rather than the achievement of genuine operational carrier capability.

The trajectory of KRI Gajah Mada over the next three to five years, spanning weapons integration, air-wing finalization, and crew certification, will ultimately determine whether Indonesia’s carrier ambition matures into credible blue-water capability or remains a largely symbolic flagship within the archipelago’s coastal defence architecture.