27 Naval Cadets, 18 crew members, including ITS Vespucci Commanding Officer, Captain Massimiliano Siragusa, and the Italian Defence Attaché in Portugal, Brigadier General Marco Buscemi, were welcomed by STRIKFORNATO’s Chief of Staff, Rear Admiral Michael Wosje, and Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, Rear Admiral Marco Papi, to our headquarters for a tour of the command and to experience the situational awareness of events that STRIKFORNATO’s Command discusses and enacts.
The crew on board the ITS Vespucci are visiting Lisbon for a three days tour, after the first stages of the 2022 Campaign in Palermo, Tunis and Algiers. The ship has on board 143 1st class cadets and 13 multinational military personnel from nations that have collaborations with the Italian Armed Forces.
The ITS Vespucci holds a permanent crew of 270 and can hold up to 150 cadets. The purpose of the ship is the carry out training campaigns focused on seamanship and navigation for Naval Academy cadets and showing-the-flag in support of national diplomacy.
STRIKFORNATO, headquartered in Oeiras, Portugal, is Supreme Allied Commander Europe's (SACEUR) rapidly deployable and scalable headquarters capable of planning and executing full spectrum joint maritime operations, primarily through the integration of U.S. naval and amphibious forces, in order to provide assurance, deterrence, and collective defence for the Alliance.
