Indonesia Commissions KRI Sriwijaya-100 as Its First Aircraft Carrier

At Tanjung Priok Port in North Jakarta on 24 September, Indonesian Armed Forces Commander Gen Agus Subiyanto lowered the Italian naval ensign, raised the red-and-white Indonesian flag, and declared KRI Sriwijaya-100 ready for state duties. Indonesia is now the second Southeast Asian nation to commission an aircraft carrier.

The 180.2-metre, 13,850-tonne carrier is the former Italian Navy's ITS Giuseppe Garibaldi, transferred to Jakarta under an intergovernmental grant agreement. It had crossed into Indonesian territorial waters on 16 September, escorted by Italian frigates, before arriving at Tanjung Priok on 18 September. Thursday's ceremony brought the 25-day voyage from Taranto to its formal close.

Subiyanto called the commission "a concrete manifestation of the modernisation of the TNI's defence" that "strengthens the TNI's role nationally as well as at the regional and global levels."

Built by Fincantieri in 1985, it spent nearly four decades in Italian service. Italy retired it in 2024. Depending on configuration, the flight deck can take 18 to 20 aircraft and helicopters. Around 400 naval personnel will crew the carrier, and PT PAL together with Fincantieri are contracted for future retrofits.

Despite earlier reporting that the carrier would be named KRI Gajah Mada, the navy settled on KRI Sriwijaya-100, honouring the Srivijaya maritime empire of 7th-to-13th-century Sumatra. The name reflects Indonesia's position as an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands that depends on sea control across three ocean corridors.

Planners see the carrier primarily as a mobile command hub for helicopter and drone operations, a platform for defence diplomacy, and a rapid-response asset for humanitarian missions. Thailand commissioned the region's first carrier in 1997. Indonesia has now followed.