The single advanced training center for lieutenants designated for naval command was inaugurated on September 11th in Augusta, at the headquarters of the fourth naval division (COMDINAV4 – COMFORPAT).
The hub was born from the Navy's desire to concentrate its operations in the Augusta base, already home to the Naval Command School, the carrying out of all the phases of the training course for young Navy commanders, including the seminar, which constitutes the purely theoretical part of the training process and which has traditionally been held up to now in Taranto, at the Navy Air and Naval Training Center (MARICENTADD).
The choice of the Armed Forces to concentrate the entire training process of the lieutenants of the vessel in Augusta offers the advantage of synchronising the contents of the seminar with those of the training sessions in a more profitable manner. Naval Command School, while offering an important further opportunity to enhance the value of the Megara naval base.
The inauguration ceremony, held in conjunction with the start of the 25th seminar, in its first Augustan edition, was attended by several civil and military authorities, and by the commander in chief of the naval fleet, Admiral Aurelio de Carolis, connected via video conference from Rome.
The event was held at Banchina Marcon, and inside the new conference room of the Augusta naval station, recently renovated and subject to important modernization and safety interventions.
The room was named after the Silver Medal for Military Valor, Admiral Giuseppe Fioravanzo.
The prefect of Syracuse, Dr. Raffaella Moscarella, was the godmother of the ceremony, embellishing it with her presence.
The recovery of the conference room, as underlined by the commander of the naval station of Augusta, Captain Lino Morello, in addition to allowing the seminar to be held in a modern and functional location, from today also represents a significant opportunity for the community of the territory and in particular for the citizens of Augusta, returning to that dual vocation that saw its genesis in the fifties when, in addition to being a cinema for sailors and their families, it allowed all the citizens of Augusta to share the shows.
In his speech, the commander of the fourth naval division and director of the Naval Command School, Rear Admiral Alberto Tarabotto, opening the proceedings of the first Sicilian edition of the seminar, addressed the attendees as follows: “It is therefore to you, dear attendees, that I address myself, not only to renew my personal compliments for this important step in your professional career, but above all to encourage you to take full advantage of the opportunity that the Navy offers you, assuring you that we are all enthusiastic about starting together this new path that is nevertheless based on the very solid roots of that training process in which our Armed Forces have continued to invest for almost a hundred years." And yet: “In finding ourselves together today to open this new cycle for our School, I would also like to express the hope that our new training center may, in a not too distant future, represent an interesting opportunity also for the wider world of the important and solid national maritime community, for the academic one and perhaps for the entrepreneurial one, as a training center or more simply for comparison for the development of the numerous themes linked to the fascinating world of the exercise of the art of command."
Admiral De Carolis thanked the numerous civil and military authorities and the many guests who wanted to share this important moment for the base and for the Navy, also speaking from the nearby capitals of Syracuse and Catania, demonstrating once again the strong bond of affection and esteem between the territory and the Armed Forces.
The commander in chief of the naval fleet, addressing the seminar attendees, underlined the importance of the training process and above all the privilege of having been selected for the delicate and exciting role of commander of a military vessel.
The ceremony was enriched by an exciting moment of musical entertainment performed by the Italian Brass Band composed of students and professors of the music conservatory "V. Bellini" of Catania, performing a captivating program of songs that accompanied the images with which the division wanted to share the pillars of its daily commitment.
Thus begins a new chapter in the almost one-hundred-year history of the Navy Command School and the naval base of Augusta, which sees the birth of the center with that spirit that Admiral Fioravanzo expressed well in his book entitled Command Art: “It is intended to be a stone of a new building, which the young people, for whom it is intended, and the elderly, to whom it is dedicated, will want to build on the basis of the experience and needs of contemporary life, so varied and complex and so dizzyingly evolving with the progress of science."
