After completing the Exercise At Sea Demonstration/Formidable Shield 2025 in the Northern Atlantic waters, the Giovanni delle Bande Nere (P 434), the first PPA in full configuration in service with the Italian Navy participated from May 29 to June 11, 2025, to the French Navy-organized Exercise POLARIS 25 with multinational assets and personnel participation.
Italian Navy press release – Translated by Naval News
The Giovanni delle Bande Nere PPA took part to one of the largest aeronaval exercises in Europe, organized and conducted in all its phases by the French Marine Nationale, to train participating forces for operations in multi-domain and high-intensity simulated scenarios.
The Polaris 25 exercise involved over 3,000 military personnel, more than 20 naval units, 40 aircraft, and numerous joint and multinational assets, operating across a vast area between the Atlantic and the English Channel. In a realistic and highly complex environment, the Italian Navy made a significant contribution thanks to the deployment of a highly valuable and technologically advanced asset.
“Participating in POLARIS 25 was a truly valuable testing ground for the entire crew, an opportunity to confirm the high operational and technological capabilities of the most modern MPCS/PPA of the Italian Navy. This exercise, the second in the Atlantic since our deployment abroad after Formidable Shield in the Hebrides, took place in a more dynamic scenario that required closer testing of the unit’s active and passive sensors, starting with the use of the ATAS (Active Towed Array System), our variable-depth sonar for underwater assets detection.”
Commander Claudia de Cesare, Commanding Officer of Giovanni delle Bande Nere .
The ship participated in the tactical phase at sea of the exercise, known as TACEX, where two opposing naval forces faced each other in open sea, simulating an evolution from crisis to conflict. The exercise was overseen by a deployable exercise control structure, which included, as a new feature for this year, the deployment of a Trusted Agent (TA) from the French Marine Nationale to support and monitor the progress of activities at sea.
The Exercise Polaris 25 integrated operations across traditional domains, with a particular focus on the underwater dimension, serving as a real laboratory for testing emerging technologies and developing integrated procedures. The national contribution, represented by the Giovanni delle Bande Nere, reaffirmed the Italian Navy’s commitment to achieving shared objectives of the exercise, including collective deterrence, NATO interoperability, and maritime security projection.
In a geopolitical context of increasing strategic ambition at sea, exercises like POLARIS 25 demonstrate the importance of joint efforts among allied navies and the capacity for adaptive, integrated, and coordinated responses by modern naval assets.
