Indonesias carrier dream risks becoming a port queen

Indonesia’s bid to acquire the retired Italian carrier Giuseppe Garibaldi is being pitched as a step toward greater maritime resilience. But it may instead expose a widening gap between ambition and the hard realities of doctrine, budgets and fleet readiness.

This month, multiple media outlets reported that Indonesia is pressing ahead with plans to receive the decommissioned Italian light carrier Giuseppe Garibaldi likely before the armed forces’ October anniversary—framing the transfer as a grant that would make Indonesia Southeast Asia’s second carrier operator after Thailand.

However, the 40-year-old, 180-meter ship risks becoming a costly “port queen” unless Indonesia funds crews, escorts and aviation to keep it at sea.

The Indonesian Navy says negotiations with Italy and Fincantieri are ongoing and hints at a fast handover, a timeline that could mean Italian personnel initially help operate the ship and that refits would occur in Indonesia, underscoring the platform’s political symbolism as much as its military utility.

While a carrier suits an archipelagic state and could anchor humanitarian relief, training, and—if modified—drone-based surveillance and strike missions, Indonesia lacks short takeoff and vertical landing (STOVL) jets, the ship lacks a well deck for heavy lift, and annual operating costs could reach tens of millions of dollars, squeezing a fleet already short of resources.

Still, acquiring the Garibaldi may be a pragmatic, lower-cost classroom to build carrier know-how before committing to a larger, more modern platform—if budgets, doctrine, and air wings follow through.

A carrier may be a good idea for Indonesia, a natural disaster-prone country of 17,000 islands straddling the Indian and Pacific Oceans. As Pornomo Yoga points out in a December 2025 article for The Strategist, natural disasters such as typhoons and earthquakes often force port, road, and airfield closures.

Yoga says that large warships such as carriers could become a three-in-one floating command hub, medical facility, and airfield. The writer adds that while Indonesia’s Makassar-class landing platform dock (LPD) could perform those roles, the class could carry only two or three helicopters, compared to 18 for the Garibaldi.

He notes that in Indonesia, the military bears the brunt of disaster response, and that a carrier would enable the military to perform that role faster, safer, and on a larger scale.

Furthermore, Madina Nusrat mentions in a September 2025 Kompas article that aside from the previously mentioned roles, a carrier could play a strategic role in safeguarding the country’s sovereignty in the Natuna Islands and its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), while at the minimum, laying the symbolic foundations for a blue-water navy.

Nusrat says that the acquisition of the Garibaldi is also tied to the procurement of the Turkish Bayraktar TB3 combat drones, which are designed to be operated from carriers.

But on the flip side of Indonesia’s carrier acquisition plans, small carriers such as Giuseppe Garibaldi also face an offense–defense dilemma: its 18-aircraft air wing means shifting more jets to strike missions weakens fleet air defense, while prioritizing defense blunts offensive punch—compounding longstanding doubts about carrier survivability in an era of anti-ship ballistic missiles and submarines.

On the aviation side, drones such as the Bayraktar TB3 lack the range and payload of manned aircraft. At the same time, Gilang Kembara noted in a March 2025 article for The Strategist that Garibaldi’s ex-Italian AV-8B Harriers would add little to humanitarian missions and would be costly to operate, echoing Thailand’s troubled experience with carrier-based Harriers in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Furthermore, Kembara notes that while Indonesia has expressed concern about its neighbors, Singapore and Australia, acquiring F-35 stealth fighters and the AUKUS nuclear submarine project, acquiring a carrier with an offensive air wing could send the wrong message.

He notes that, instead of acquiring a carrier, the Makassar-class LPD could maintain amphibious assault capability while also being used for humanitarian relief without sending a threatening message to regional neighbors.

The supporting ecosystem looks just as thin. In April 2025, Naval News quoted Indonesian Navy Chief of Staff Admiral Muhammad Ali as saying warship readiness stood at only 60.93%, with fleet size still below optimal and many vessels aging—raising doubts about whether enough escorts could be spared to protect a carrier.

From a systems-level perspective, Keoni Marzuki and others argued in a May 2025 S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) report that acquiring Garibaldi risks short-sighted resource allocation, as the ship would impose high costs for training, maintenance, protection and infrastructure expansion on top of acquisition—potentially crowding out more urgent fleet priorities.

There is also the question of whether a carrier fits Indonesia’s naval doctrine at all.

Dickry Nurdiansyah mentions in an October 2025 article in the peer-reviewed Indonesian Maritime Journal that Indonesia’s naval doctrine is best described as a “Benteng Nusantara” (Fortress of the Archipelago) or “Type A+” small coastal navy posture: fundamentally defensive, littoral-centric, and built around sea denial rather than global power projection.

Nurdiansyah emphasizes layered anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) using coastal missiles, submarines, mines, patrol craft, and joint command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) integration to raise the cost of intervention in Indonesian waters.

He adds that any “power projection” is limited and calibrated, aimed at internal archipelagic mobility, sovereignty enforcement, and humanitarian relief, not expeditionary warfare. He portrays the Indonesian Navy as a green-water force optimized for geography and fiscal constraints, not a blue-water carrier navy.

From a foreign policy perspective, Trystanto Sanjaya and Alfin Basundoro argued in an October 2025 Australian Institute of International Affairs (AIIA) article that carriers are optimized for offensive operations and distant power projection.

Sanjaya and Basundoro say it is unlikely Indonesia would ever use such a platform for the kind of expeditionary warfare for which carriers were designed, given its convivial and relatively friendly foreign policy.

In the end, Giuseppe Garibaldi risks becoming less a bridge to a blue-water future than a floating stress test of whether strategy, budgets, escorts and air wings can match ambition.