Fincantieri Cuts Steel for PPA 9, the Italian Navy’s Final Patrol Vessel
Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri held a steel-cutting ceremony on October 15, 2026, at its Riva Trigoso yard for PPA 9, the ninth multipurpose patrol vessel ordered by the Italian Navy and the seventh and final hull in the PPA programme. OCCAR, the European joint armament cooperation organisation acting as the contracting authority, took part in the event alongside representatives of the Italian Navy and Fincantieri, who jointly activated the laser cutting machine.
The programme’s last hull
According to OCCAR, PPA 9 will be the final vessel delivered to the Marina Militare under the programme. Five ships of the class are already in service, and a sixth, PPA 8, is under construction. With PPA 9’s steel now being cut, every hull in the seven-ship order has entered the construction process.
OCCAR described the programme as “a cornerstone of the Italian Navy’s fleet renewal effort” and called PPA 9 a highly capable, flexible and technologically advanced platform suited to current and future operational requirements.
Contract Amendment No. 10 and the “Full Combat Configuration”
OCCAR said PPA 9 will be built under Contract Amendment No. 10 in the class’s “Full Combat Configuration,” which it described as “the most advanced and capable variant” of the PPA. The announcement did not give the ship’s length, tonnage, weapons fit or helicopter capacity.
Publicly available information on the PPA class indicates that vessels built in the Full Combat Configuration carry a 127mm main gun alongside Otomat/Teseo Mk2E anti-ship missiles and Aster air-defence missiles, while the class’s lighter configuration is limited to a 76mm gun. Earlier PPAs delivered by Fincantieri were built at various points between those two extremes.
Construction at Riva Trigoso
Riva Trigoso, where the ceremony took place, is part of Fincantieri’s integrated shipyard complex and one of the construction hubs for the PPA class. OCCAR’s statement gave no construction schedule or expected delivery date for PPA 9, saying only that the steel-cutting marked the official start of construction.
On earlier PPA hulls, the period from steel-cutting to launch typically ran one to two years, with a roughly similar interval between launch and delivery. PPA 9 is expected to follow a comparable timeline, though OCCAR has not confirmed any specific dates.
OCCAR’s role and the multinational procurement model
OCCAR is an intergovernmental body whose members include France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium and the United Kingdom, and it manages contracts for several joint European defence programmes. Its role as contracting authority for the PPA programme means the project runs through OCCAR’s standard oversight and contract-management framework rather than through Italy’s national procurement process alone. That structure is why a change such as PPA 9’s configuration is formalised as a numbered Contract Amendment.
The fact that Amendment No. 10 pushes PPA 9 directly into the Full Combat Configuration suggests the Italian Navy has moved toward fielding more fully-armed hulls as the programme has progressed; several earlier vessels were launched in lighter configurations, with some systems added later.
Where PPA fits among Europe’s patrol-ship programmes
The PPA class has also become an export product for Fincantieri, which has pitched lighter variants such as the FCX30 and FCX20 to other navies. PPA 9 being built to the class’s highest configuration for Italy’s own navy, while export pitches favour lighter versions, illustrates how Fincantieri is positioning the platform across different customer tiers.
Once complete, the programme will put Italy’s surface fleet renewal roughly on the same timeline as comparable French and German frigate and patrol-vessel modernisation efforts, adding to NATO’s conventional surface combatant capacity in the western and central Mediterranean over the coming decade.
Sources
OCCAR (Organisation for Joint Armament Cooperation) official press release, as reported by Naval News, “Fincantieri Cuts Steel for Italian Navy’s Final PPA Patrol Vessel” (October 16, 2026) — used to verify the ceremony, date, parties involved, and Contract Amendment No. 10 details.
