Naviris main activities

In July 2022, the European Commission selected the proposal submitted by the Consortium led by Naviris together with Fincantieri, Naval Group and Navantia for the European Patrol Corvette (EPC) call. The consortium’s proposal aims to maximise synergies and collaboration among European shipbuilding companies. By collectively developing the new EPC, they aim to ensure European sovereignty for second rank warships. Naviris is paving the way to the consolidation of European naval defence in response to increasing pressure from worldwide competitors.

Further to the Call 1, Naviris, together with Fincantieri, Naval Group, Navantia and Hydrus, submitted an industrial proposal related to the MMPC Call 2 of the European Defence Fund (EDF-2023-DA-NAVAL-MMPC) on 22 November 2023. Building on the foundations of European Patrol Corvette (EPC) for which MMPC Call 1 contracts were signed on 24 October 2023, and within the framework of PESCO, our industry’s commitment has been intensified in MMPC Call 2. This next phase aims at completing the initial and detailed design and at developing and integrating innovative technological bricks, which will enable the ships to host several systems and payloads as well as perform a wide range of tasks and missions. 
 

This will allow production to start on the two initial prototypes of the naval platform (one is LRM for a Long Range Mission version and the other FCM for Full Combatant Mission) that will make up the future fleets of advanced corvettes, with the final goal of expanding the level of commonality, interoperability and standardisation between the navies of different member states. The European Commission has commissioned OCCAR with the management of the next step has been on its behalf.

The HRZ programme delivered 4 ships between 2009 and 2011 (“Andrea Doria”, “Caio Duilio”, “Forbin” and “Chevalier Paul”) that will need to undergo their midlife update between 2026 and 2030 with the aim to preserve the highest level technology level of this class of vessels in order to maintain/increase their capabilities/performances until their end of life. In 2020 Naviris was awarded by OCCAR with a HRZ MLU Feasibility Study Contract, to be undertaken with the support of Fincantieri, Naval Group and other Suppliers like Eurosam, Leonardo, Thales, Sigen, MBDA. The HRZ MLU Feasibility Study, carried out over 15 months, was aimed at identifying and analyzing the modifications to be carried out on French (FR) and Italian (IT) HRZ class destroyers to cover three level of proliferating of next future threats:  

Following the completion of the Feasibility Study, the Nations tasked OCCAR to commence preliminary activities in order to allow the preparation of a common HRZ MLU Contract, including the AAW domain, to support the procurement activities of the FR and IT HRZ MLU.
Then, IT and FR Ministries of Defence have entrusted OCCAR with the management of the HRZ Programme and they requested OCCAR, as the Contracting Authority (CA), to seek for an offer from Industry for HRZ MLU Contract.

In January 2022, two contracts for additional de-risking studies were awarded to Naviris to be taken as reference for the MLU HRZ contract.
On 20th July 2022, OCCAR has issued to Naviris and Eurosam an Invitation To Tender (ITT) relevant to the MLU of the 4 FR/IT HRZ Destroyers concerning the overall PF and CS update. Following the successful completion of the bid phase Naviris, in co-contractorship with Eurosam and with the role of Contract coordinator, was then assigned the contract by OCCAR on July 2023.

In view of the above, the HRZ MLU Contract will fulfill the following major Nations’ needs, which are Enhancement of the AAW Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM) capabilities, Platform (PF) and Combat System (CS) upgrades, and obsolescence resolution.

Naviris signed a 4-year contract regarding R&T with OCCAR in June 2020 for joint research activities, but also for the upgrade of design and production process for the ships destined for France and Italy as well as export markets. As prime contractor, Naviris coordinates the technical activities managed by Fincantieri and Naval Group, and owns the intellectual property of all the research findings. The ultimate demonstrations for the R&T program’s final study related to Digital Ship, and took place on 22 November 2023 in Genova.

This represents a concrete result of the cooperation between Fincantieri and Naval Group, coordinated by Naviris, to the benefit of France and Italy, represented by their Defence Procurement Agencies (respectively DGA and SEGREDIFESA), who mandated OCCAR to manage the contract. Discussions are ongoing with both navies and nations for the realisation of EPC.