Indonesia docks its first aircraft carrier, the former Giuseppe Garibaldi

Indonesia's first aircraft carrier tied up at Pier 107, Tanjung Priok, at 7:58 a.m. Jakarta time on Friday, 18 September. The ship is the former Italian Navy carrier ITS Giuseppe Garibaldi, commissioned in 1985 and retired in 2024. A marching band on the quay played the Betawi song Si Jali-Jali. Two Indonesian frigates, KRI Brawijaya-320 and KRI Prabu Siliwangi-321, had escorted the hull in from waters off Bangka Belitung the day before.

Navy Chief of Staff Admiral Muhammad Ali told reporters the Italian flag will come down on 24 September. The new name is KRI Sriwijaya, after the Sumatra-based maritime polity that once taxed the Strait of Malacca. An earlier plan to call the ship KRI Gajah Mada was dropped during the voyage. Commissioning is lined up for the armed forces anniversary period around 5 October, with some officials still citing 25 September as the formal entry date.

The hull and the bill

Garibaldi is 180 metres long. It was built for short takeoff and vertical landing aircraft and for helicopters. Vice Admiral Tunggul, the navy spokesman, said it can embark up to 18 helicopters and house as many as 830 people. Four gas turbines give about 81,000 horsepower, a top speed near 30 knots, and a range of about 7,000 nautical miles at 20 knots. The navy is assigning 310 crew.

Italy transferred the ship as a grant valued at more than €54 million. Rome retires a hull it would otherwise have had to scrap. Jakarta gets a flight deck without paying a new-build price. The Indonesian Defence Ministry has set aside 7.2 trillion rupiah, about $518 million, to retrofit and modernise the ship. Parliament's Commission I has heard a higher figure. Lawmaker TB Hasanuddin has said the retrofit alone could reach 16 trillion rupiah, about $900 million. The finance ministry approved $450 million of programme financing in 2025.

The ship left Taranto on the evening of 24 August under Italian commanding officer Capt. Marco Guerriero, with a mixed Italian and Indonesian crew. It passed the Suez Canal and called at Safaga in Egypt and Colombo in Sri Lanka. Homeport plans point to Lampung Naval Base in Pesawaran Regency, on the southern Sumatra shore that faces the Sunda Strait.

What Jakarta says the ship is for

Admiral Ali said President Prabowo Subianto wants the carrier used first for military operations other than war, above all disaster relief. Indonesia sits on a dense band of earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions. A deck that can launch many helicopters at once is a useful logistics platform when roads are cut. Ali said the ship is in good condition and should serve 15 to 20 years.

That official line does not cancel the military reading. Thailand commissioned HTMS Chakri Naruebet in 1997 and remains the only other Southeast Asian state with a carrier. A flight deck in Jakarta changes how planners in Canberra, Singapore and Beijing draw the map, even if the first years are spent flying relief loads rather than combat air patrols. Italy, for its part, is using the gift as an opening toward submarine and aircraft talks with Indonesia.

Critics at home will keep asking whether an ageing Italian deck is the right spend when the navy still needs patrol ships for a coastline that runs more than 54,000 kilometres. The counter is already on the pier: a hull that exists, a name drawn from a maritime empire, and a date for the flag change. Sriwijaya will be judged less by Friday's ceremony than by whether the retrofit stays near 7.2 trillion rupiah and whether the helicopters actually leave the deck when the next island goes dark.