The deviation of the Fasan frigate for Flotilla costs tens of thousands of euros per day. A onerous operation that will not change the Israel strategy
In Gaza you do not enter, it is strange and Flotilla would have had the opportunity to land in the port of Ashkelon to download the aid which would then have been delivered through the already active humanitarian channels. But this road seemed too easy, not very striking, it took the spotlight of the international media and then here is the forcing, the route towards the precluded destination. A stance that costs dear Italian taxpayers, however.
“To guarantee assistance to the Italian citizens present on the Flotilla,” clarified the Minister of Defense Guido Crosetto in a note, “I authorized the immediate intervention of the Multural Fasan Freste of the Navy who was north of Crete north as part of the Safe Sea operation”.
De deviating a frigate, which was returning to Italian ports, to shield on the high seas to the flotilla, is not free. Fasan is not any ship. It is an avant -garde vehicle, a recently built missile, anti -Sommergible structure equipped with latest generation electronic weapons and artillery, including torpedoes and missiles. He operated in the Red Sea and in Yemen, to defend the merchants from the attacks of Somali and Huthi pirates.
We are therefore talking about a frigate that deflected from its path burns more money in terms of fuel, logistics, machine hours. Yesterday, Minister Crosetto clarified that the Alpine frigate will come to replace Fasan, who will return to his original mission.
Rules of engagement and safety
Since, for safety reasons, it is not possible to know in detail the rules of engagement of a military ship, it is not clear whether, to avoid accidents, the use of the force will be allowed or not. The minister reiterated that “Italian naval units do not perform escort functions or will come out of international waters” if the flotilla should decide to force the Israeli block.
This serves to understand how expensive the operation is. But the topic of the costs that the flotilla has set in motion, was not raised by anyone and less than the left that has always done fleas to how much the government spends to transport migrants to Albania with ships.
The accounts of the operation
Let’s do two accounts. Taking as a reference “the burdensome tables” of the Naval Units of the Navy, one day of navigation of the former Maestral Unit costs about 60,000 euros, the San Marco 45,000 while the patrollters between 12 and 15,000 euros. The use of naval units only would cost 192,000 euros per day to which the cost of the flight hours of the dozen aircraft assigned to the operation should be added.
But Fasan and Alpine are new generation frigates, equipped with sophisticated technologies and with less personnel on board but of high specialization. Mistral had 225 while Fasan has about 170. An approximate estimate of the daily cost of the naval unit committed to protecting the flotilla is around 30,000 euros.
Highest estimates and the comparison with Mare Nostrum
But there are even higher estimates. Taking the public data of the Mare Nostrum operation (9.3 million per month, about 300,000 euros per day for the device), the operational use of a frigate is worth about 120-250,000 euros per day. The same figure on which the opposition had turned on the spotlight, raising the barricades, when it came to ferry the migrants to Albania.
With the aggravating circumstance, in the case of the Flotilla, that the operation will not move the Israel strategy by a step and will not bring any help to Gaza.
