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El año pasado, los negociadores acusaron a Estados Unidos de utilizar "tácticas de intimidación" para hundir un marco de cero emisiones netas respaldado por la ONU para la industria. Leer
Maritime Affairs and Insular Policy Minister Vassilis Kikilias voiced Greece’s strong reservations over the European Union’s decarbonization framework for shipping, while underscoring the need for a more realistic, economically and…
From green transition to g…
As he noted, Europe is designing the sector’s transition with a multi-decade horizon, placing emphasis on alternative fuels and decarbonization targets, without adequately addressing immediate market challenges and real-world implementation constraints. “Many of these measures are not feasible,” he stressed, highlighting the need to strike a balance between ambition and realism. The minister warned that the imposition of extensive taxation to achieve zero emissions—at an estimated cost of up to 130 billion euros by 2027 and between 100-300 billion euros by 2035—poses significant risks to the economy. He pointed out that these costs would ultimately be passed on to charterers and, in turn, to the real economy, leading to higher prices and intensifying inflationary pressures. “Europe is already being tested by rising costs, conflicts, and the energy crisis. Such an additional burden cannot be placed on societies,” he underlined, calling for a common-sense approach and the identification of viable, implementable solutions. Referring to the seriousness of the situation in the Strait of Hormuz and its immediate implications for global shipping and the economy, Kikilias described conditions as comparable to a conflict environment, posing elevated risks to international navigation. He emphasized that the protection of human life and seafarers remains the top priority, noting that the crisis is unfolding at one of the most critical geostrategic chokepoints for the energy supply chain and global trade. “Between 80% and 90% of global trade is transported by sea, while under normal conditions approximately 20% of the world’s oil and 25% of natural gas transit through the Strait of Hormuz,” he said. The minister underlined that disruptions to energy and raw material flows are amplifying pressures on the global economy, warning that the longer the crisis persists, the greater the risks to energy security and everyday life. He also made specific reference to the presence of Greek vessels in the region, noting that 11 Greek-flagged ships—one tugboat and ten tankers—are currently operating within the Persian Gulf, while an additional 27 vessels are located outside the Strait. The ministry remains in constant communication with crews, up to three times daily, ensuring the provision of guidance and support. At the same time, he noted that repatriations of seafarers who requested to return have already been carried out, assuring that “all those who wished to return have done so.” He added that crews have adequate supplies, as many vessels are currently at anchorage. However, Kikilias expressed his concern over maritime safety, referring to the dozens of vessels that have come under attack in the wider region, either by drones or missiles. He stressed that although Greece does not have direct jurisdiction over foreign-flagged vessels, there is continuous monitoring of developments and ongoing efforts to safeguard Greek seafarers. “No one can predict when this situation will end or what the later repercussions will be,” he concluded, emphasizing that operating in a conflict zone entails persistent risks for crews and requires heightened vigilance from all parties involved. Για να εμφανίζονται περισσότερα άρθρα τηςΝαυτεμπορικήςστις αναζητήσεις σας εύκολα και γρήγορα, πρέπει να προσθέσετε το site στις προτιμώμενες πηγές σας. Μπορείτε να το κάνετε πηγαίνονταςεδώ.
On the night of Aug. 9, 1942, an Allied fleet of 17 warships guarded the approaches to Guadalcanal. The fleet was newer, larger, and better equipped than the Japanese force bearing down on it. It had six heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and nine destroyers…
Join War on the Rocks and gain access to content trusted by policymakers, military leaders, and strategic thinkers worldwide. On the night of Aug. 9, 1942, an Allied fleet of 17 warships guarded the approaches to Guadalcanal. The fleet was newer, larger, and better equipped than the Japanese force bearing down on it. It had six heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and nine destroyers. It carried radar, a technology that should have detected the enemy long before any lookout could spot a ship through the darkness. By the numbers, the Allied squadron was on average 10 years newer and outweighed its opponent by more than 85 percent in total displacement. On paper, the result should have been straightforward.Thirty-three minutes later, the Japanese force had destroyed four Allied heavy cruisers and damaged two additional destroyers. The Japanese had not lost a single ship. The Battle of Savo Island was, by most accounts, thesecond-worst defeat in the history of the U.S. Navyafter the attack on Pearl Harbor. It wasmore lopsided than roughly 90 percent of all naval engagementsfought since the age of sail. And the fleet that lost was the one that had almost every material advantage. Superior tonnage, superior numbers, and superior sensor technology could not compensate for a broken chain of command, inadequate training, and the inability of crews to operate their own equipment under combat conditions. As the U.S. Navy prepares to field a new generation of untested technologies — likeautonomous drone wingmenandAI-powered target recognition systems— against a peer competitor in the Western Pacific, Savo Island is a reminder that acquiring a capability and being able to employ it are not the same thing.BECOME A MEMBEROperation Watchtower and the Guadalcanal CampaignIn the months following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese advance was swift and devastating. The Philippines, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, and Burma all fell in rapid succession. By the spring of 1942, Japan had established a defensive perimeter stretching from the Central Pacific to the Indian Ocean. TheBattle of Midwaydemonstrated that aircraft carriers, not battleships, would decide the war’s great fleet actions on the open ocean. Yet carriers could not operate safely in the confined waters near land, where Japanese air bases and submarines posed a constant threat. Cruisers and destroyers fought the naval war closer to shore in exactly the kind of surface engagements that Midway supposedly rendered obsolete.In Aug. 1942, American strategic planners launchedOperation Watchtower, a campaign to seize Guadalcanal and the neighboring island of Tulagi in the Solomon Islands. The goals were to curtail the Imperial Japanese Navy’s operational reach in the South Pacific, deny Japan the use of a partially constructed airfield on Guadalcanal, and establish a forward air base for subsequent Allied offensives. The operation straddled two separate Allied command areas, the South Pacific Area under Adm. Robert Ghormley and the South West Pacific Area under Gen. Douglas MacArthur. The two commands,separated in part to provide MacArthur with a rolebefitting his political stature, struggled to share information in a timely manner. Intelligence about Japanese movements could take hours to reach the officers who needed it, if it reached them at all.Vice Adm. Frank Jack Fletcher was the overall commander for Watchtower and directed the carrier task groups providing air cover from over 100 miles away. Rear Adm. Richmond K. Turner commanded the amphibious fleet. Beneath Turner was Rear Adm. Victor Crutchley of the Royal Australian Navy, assigned to command the surface fleet protecting the transports inside the sound between Guadalcanal, Tulagi, and Savo Island. Crutchley was a British officer commanding American subordinates for the first time, and he neither conferred with the American captains in advance nor issued a standard pre-engagement battle plan.Intelligence failurescompounded these command problems. Although reconnaissance aircraft spotted a column of Japanese ships heading southeast towards the sound on the morning of Aug. 8, delayed reports and miscommunication meant that Allied commanders did not receive accurate information about the approaching Japanese squadron until it was too late to act on it.Thirty-Three MinutesWhen Vice Adm. Gunichi Mikawa, commander of the recently created Eighth Fleet, learned that the Allies had invaded Guadalcanal on Aug. 7, he moved quickly.His objective was to destroy the Allied transport ships anchored off the beaches. If he could sink or scatter them before they finished unloading, the U.S. Marines ashore would be stranded without adequate supply. He assembled every available cruiser in the area, arranged them into a single battle line, and placed himself at the front in his flagship, the IJN Chokai. The formation was a direct product ofJapanese night doctrine: A single commander at the head of a single column could control the entire engagement, minimizing the confusion that plagued multi-group formations in darkness. While his main goal was destroying the transports, Crutchley’s cruisers stood between Mikawa and the anchorage, so they would have to be dealt with first.Mikawa’s squadron approached the sound from the northwest in the early hours of Aug. 9, threading between Savo Island and the coast. Two Allied picket destroyers, USSBlueand USSRalph Talbot, were stationed northwest of the sound to provide early warning of any approaching surface force, and their surface search radars had a physical detection horizon of roughly 19,000 yards. At 0053 hours, IJN Chokai’s lookouts spotted the USS Blue at 10,900 yards, but Mikawa ordered his squadron to hold fire to preserve the element of surprise. Over the next 45 minutes, the Japanese column silently closed to torpedo range of the southern group of Allied cruisers, passing within 5,000 yards of USS Blue. Neither Allied picket screen detected the oncoming Japanese ships. Their radar equipment was working properly. Their operators simply could not use it effectively. They had spent two exhausting days scanning the skies for aircraft and had little experience interpreting surface contacts, where returns from ships blended with returns from islands and reefs. In principle, the pickets should have provided at least 45 minutes of warning, but lack of preparation and experience meant none was given.Crutchley had divided his ships into three separate groups stationed at different points around the sound. The groups were too widely dispersed to support one another, and the disposition itself reflected a fundamental misreading of the threat. Crutchley designed his three-group arrangement primarily to ensure anti-submarine coverage of the sound’s entry points. The nearest Japanese submarine was in fact hundreds of miles away. That evening, Crutchley left his flagship HMAS Australia to attend a conference with Turner, delegating command to Capt. Howard Bode of USS Chicago, who promptly went to sleep. Crutchley failed to inform the other captains, including the senior officer, Capt. Frederick Riefkohl of USS Vincennes. The Allied cruisers were not at general quarters. Officers were in their bunks. Gun crews were not at their stations. The cruiser USS Quincy had left its scout aircraft fueled and sitting on its catapult rails rather than launching them or draining the fuel tanks, as standard procedure dictated when battle was expected.At 0144 hrs, the Japanese launched torpedoes. At 0150 hrs, they opened fire. What followed was more a rout than a battle. Japanese cruisers used searchlights, star shells, and aircraft-dropped flares to illuminate the Allied ships. At close range, their eight-inch guns caused devastating damage: Japanese gunners achieved a hit rate of eight to twelve percent and landed their initial hits within the first few salvos. Because the Allies had been caught at reduced readiness, Mikawa’s squadron had several minutes of completely unopposed fire, inflicting disproportionate damage before the Allied crews could respond. Sailors jolted from sleep had to navigate narrow passages and stairways to reach their battle stations. Early hits on these compartments blocked many from ever arriving, degrading each ship’s fighting capacity well beyond the apparent physical damage.The Japanese struck the southern group first. HMAS Canberra was hit so quickly and so hard that it sank without ever firing a shot. USS Chicago took severe damage, and Bode, suddenly awakened with the battle already raging, focused on maneuvering his own damaged ship rather than commanding the squadron. He withdrew USS Chicago from the fight before its main battery fired a single round, and he neither issued orders to the other ships nor alerted them to the attack. Within minutes, the southern group had effectively ceased to exist as a fighting force.With the southern approach cleared, Mikawa could have pressed on toward the transport anchorage. Instead, he turned his column north toward the second group of Allied cruisers patrolling between Savo Island and Tulagi. It was a decision consistent with his training. Japanese night doctrine emphasized destroying the enemy’s combat power first — the transports could wait.The northern group fared no better than the southern. The crews of USS Astoria, USS Vincennes, and USS Quincy were caught asleep and scrambling. When USS Quincy’s fueled scout planes were hit by eight-inch shells, the resulting fires illuminated not just USS Quincy but every Allied ship nearby, giving the Japanese gunners targets they could see without searchlights. USS Astoria’s gunnery officer initially ordered return fire, but the ship’s captain countermanded the order. He could not tell whether the ships firing on him were Japanese or friendly, and he did not trust the radar picture to resolve the question. Like many Allied officers, he seems to have harbored a deep skepticism toward the new technology. Radar operators were inexperienced, and their reports often seemed ambiguous or contradictory. In the chaos of a night engagement that no one had anticipated, the captain chose caution over the uncertain word of a radar screen. He was not wrong to worry about fratricide. The destroyer USS Bagley, disoriented in the confusion, launched torpedoes into the burning HMAS Canberra, mistaking her for a Japanese vessel.The disparity in realized firepower tells a stark story about the battle. The Allies had more guns, but theJapanese fired nearly four timesas many total rounds during the battle. 32 Japanese eight-inch main battery guns fired 1,020 rounds. 44 Allied eight-inch guns fired 107. By 0216 hrs, it was over. Mikawa ordered his ships to cease fire and withdraw. All three cruisers of the northern group, USS Astoria, USS Vincennes, and USS Quincy, sank within hours of the engagement, joining HMAS Canberra on the floor of what would come to be known as Ironbottom Sound.Mikawa had annihilated the Allied screening force. The transports off the Guadalcanal beaches were now virtually defenseless. Yet rather than press on to finish the job he had set out to do, Mikawa chose to withdraw. His squadron had become scattered during the engagement with the northern group and reassembling it in darkness would take time. Exposing his cruisers to carrier aircraft in daylight seemed too great a risk. It was a reasonable decision given what Mikawa knew. But it may have been the choice that saved the Guadalcanal campaign. The transports survived, and though they departed earlier than planned,enough supplieshad been unloaded for the marines to hold their beachhead until reinforcements arrived. Had Mikawa pressed on to destroy the transports, or had the Japanese reinforced more aggressively before American logistics caught up, the beachhead might not have held, and Guadalcanal may have been lost.Image: U.S. Navy viaWikimedia CommonsWhat ChangedThe Battle of Savo Island was the opening act of a naval campaign that would become one of the most intense stretches of surface combat in naval history. The shock of the loss at Savo forced a reckoning within the U.S. Navy. The brutal campaign for Guadalcanal that followed became the proving ground where the service developed, at great cost, the institutional reforms, tactics, and training needed to fight coordinated surface engagements against a skilled adversary.Between Aug. 1942 and Feb. 1943, the U.S. and Imperial Japanese navies fought seven major surface engagements in the confined seas north of Guadalcanal as part of the broader Solomon Islands campaign. The learning curve was steep. Atthe Battle of Cape Esperancein October, the U.S. Navy won its first night surface action of the campaign, using radar to detect the Japanese force at long range, though continued confusion over the radar picture nearly squandered the advantage. At theNaval Battle of Guadalcanalin November, two rear admirals were killed, and the fighting was so close that ships missed colliding by yards, with one officer comparing the action to abarroom brawl after the lights had been shot out. At theBattle of Tassafarongadays later, Japanese destroyers armed with Long Lance torpedoes crippled three American heavy cruisers and sank a fourth, despite being detected on radar first. Yet out of these costly engagements came a series of innovations that would transform how the Navy fought at sea.The most consequential innovation was the Combat Information Center, a dedicated shipboard facility that integrated input from radar, radio, and sonar into a single real-time picture of the battlespace. Before the Combat Information Center, individual radar operators sent raw reports up the chain and hoped for the best. Afterward, trained teams processed sensor data continuously, updated tactical plots, and fed synthesized information directly to the ship’s captain. This freed the captain to make decisions rather than interpret data. New tactics followed. Officers in the Solomons theater began experimenting with independently maneuvering destroyer divisions coordinated through the Combat Information Center, using one group to draw fire while another struck from an unexpected direction. These tactics required trust in the system, confidence in the radar picture, and extensive rehearsal. By late 1943,squadrons in the South Pacific had all three.The results were dramatic. In Nov. 1943 at theBattle of Cape St. George, the U.S. Navy detected the enemy first, fired first, and coordinated its fires across independently maneuvering groups. The same radar technology that had been ineffective at Savo Island became a war-winning advantage once crews learned how to use it and commanders learned how to trust it. The institutional reforms born in the Solomons did not stay there. The Combat Information Center became standard across the fleet, and the doctrinal lessons about radar integration, coordinated maneuver, and decentralized command shaped how the U.S. Navy fought for the remainder of the Pacific war, from the Philippine Sea to Leyte Gulf to Okinawa. What began as a desperate response to catastrophe at Savo Island became part of the foundation on which the Navy achieved sea control in the western Pacific.Savo Island Through the YearsAmong the veterans who fought in the waters around Guadalcanal, the battle was known simply as the “Battle of the Five Sitting Ducks,” a name capturing the bitterness of a defeat that felt, to the men who survived it, entirely avoidable.The U.S. Navy was slow to examine the defeat openly. The Navy conveneda formal board of inquiryunder Rear Adm. Arthur Hepburn which concluded in 1943 that the defeat stemmed from surprise, inadequate readiness, and poor dispositions. The board recommended censure for Capt. Bode but stopped short of holding senior officers accountable. Its report was classified for years. The most detailed tactical reconstruction,prepared by Capt. Richard Bates, for the Naval War College in 1950, remained a government document with limited circulation. What the public got instead was theofficial naval history written by Rear Adm. Samuel Eliot Morison in 1949, which framed the defeat largely in terms of the decisions and errors of individual officers on the night itself.Later research drawing onJapaneseandAustraliansources revealed just how much the standard American narrative had missed about the doctrinal and institutional roots of the defeat. While earlier accounts had asked what went wrong on the night of Aug. 9, this later work asked why two navies that had spent decades preparing for war against each other arrived at Savo Island so unevenly prepared to fight. The answer pointed beyond the officers on the bridge that night and towards the training pipelines, command structures, and technology integration practices that shaped what those officers could and could not do once the shooting started.The Lessons of Savo IslandFor much of the postwar period, the Battle of Savo Island lived in the shadow of Midway and the land fighting on Guadalcanal. The carrier battle offered a story of ingenuity and decisive victory. The Marine Corps’ campaign provided one of endurance and heroism. Savo Island offered neither. It was a story of institutional failure, and it fit uncomfortably within the broader narrative of American triumph in the Pacific. Yet looking back, Savo Island carries lessons that extend well beyond the Solomon Islands in 1942.The first concerns technology. Acquiring a weapon or a sensor is not the same as knowing how to use it. Radar should have been decisive at Savo Island, but the crews operating it had never been trained to perform the complex chain of interpretation and communication that the technology required under realistic conditions.Today’s systems are even more complexand require operators, maintainers, and commanders who understand not just what the technology can do in theory but how it functions under the confusion, fatigue, and time pressure of combat. If the U.S. Navy assumes that its technological edge will translate automatically into battlefield performance, it risks repeating the error that cost four heavy cruisers in a single night in 1942.The second is about command and organization. The Allied chain of command at Savo Island was fragmented across multiple headquarters, multiple nationalities, and multiple levels of authority, none of which communicated effectively with the others. The U.S. Navy today operates in a similarly complex environment of joint and multinational command structures. The institutional reforms that followed Savo Island succeeded because they addressed the organizational roots of the problem rather than simply blaming individuals. Future adaptations will need to do the same.Finally, Savo Island is a reminder that outcomes in naval combat can be extraordinarily sensitive to small variations in human behavior: A few minutes of warning, a few thousand yards of repositioning, a single decision to concentrate rather than divide a squadron. None of these involves any change in the hardware on either side, yet any one of them may have been sufficient to transform a catastrophic defeat into a decisive victory at Savo Island. China would be wise to consider this before concluding that numerical superiority at sea guarantees the outcome of a future war. And the United States would be wise not to assume that its technological advantages will do the work on their own.BECOME A MEMBERJohn Severini is a Ph.D. student in government at Georgetown University.Stephen Biddle is a professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University and an adjunct senior fellow for defense policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.Image:Wikimedia Commons Thirty-three minutes later, the Japanese force had destroyed four Allied heavy cruisers and damaged two additional destroyers. The Japanese had not lost a single ship. The Battle of Savo Island was, by most accounts, thesecond-worst defeat in the history of the U.S. Navyafter the attack on Pearl Harbor. It wasmore lopsided than roughly 90 percent of all naval engagementsfought since the age of sail. And the fleet that lost was the one that had almost every material advantage. Superior tonnage, superior numbers, and superior sensor technology could not compensate for a broken chain of command, inadequate training, and the inability of crews to operate their own equipment under combat conditions. As the U.S. Navy prepares to field a new generation of untested technologies — likeautonomous drone wingmenandAI-powered target recognition systems— against a peer competitor in the Western Pacific, Savo Island is a reminder that acquiring a capability and being able to employ it are not the same thing. In the months following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese advance was swift and devastating. The Philippines, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, and Burma all fell in rapid succession. By the spring of 1942, Japan had established a defensive perimeter stretching from the Central Pacific to the Indian Ocean. TheBattle of Midwaydemonstrated that aircraft carriers, not battleships, would decide the war’s great fleet actions on the open ocean. Yet carriers could not operate safely in the confined waters near land, where Japanese air bases and submarines posed a constant threat. Cruisers and destroyers fought the naval war closer to shore in exactly the kind of surface engagements that Midway supposedly rendered obsolete. In Aug. 1942, American strategic planners launchedOperation Watchtower, a campaign to seize Guadalcanal and the neighboring island of Tulagi in the Solomon Islands. The goals were to curtail the Imperial Japanese Navy’s operational reach in the South Pacific, deny Japan the use of a partially constructed airfield on Guadalcanal, and establish a forward air base for subsequent Allied offensives. The operation straddled two separate Allied command areas, the South Pacific Area under Adm. Robert Ghormley and the South West Pacific Area under Gen. Douglas MacArthur. The two commands,separated in part to provide MacArthur with a rolebefitting his political stature, struggled to share information in a timely manner. Intelligence about Japanese movements could take hours to reach the officers who needed it, if it reached them at all. Vice Adm. Frank Jack Fletcher was the overall commander for Watchtower and directed the carrier task groups providing air cover from over 100 miles away. Rear Adm. Richmond K. Turner commanded the amphibious fleet. Beneath Turner was Rear Adm. Victor Crutchley of the Royal Australian Navy, assigned to command the surface fleet protecting the transports inside the sound between Guadalcanal, Tulagi, and Savo Island. Crutchley was a British officer commanding American subordinates for the first time, and he neither conferred with the American captains in advance nor issued a standard pre-engagement battle plan.Intelligence failurescompounded these command problems. Although reconnaissance aircraft spotted a column of Japanese ships heading southeast towards the sound on the morning of Aug. 8, delayed reports and miscommunication meant that Allied commanders did not receive accurate information about the approaching Japanese squadron until it was too late to act on it. When Vice Adm. Gunichi Mikawa, commander of the recently created Eighth Fleet, learned that the Allies had invaded Guadalcanal on Aug. 7, he moved quickly.His objective was to destroy the Allied transport ships anchored off the beaches. If he could sink or scatter them before they finished unloading, the U.S. Marines ashore would be stranded without adequate supply. He assembled every available cruiser in the area, arranged them into a single battle line, and placed himself at the front in his flagship, the IJN Chokai. The formation was a direct product ofJapanese night doctrine: A single commander at the head of a single column could control the entire engagement, minimizing the confusion that plagued multi-group formations in darkness. While his main goal was destroying the transports, Crutchley’s cruisers stood between Mikawa and the anchorage, so they would have to be dealt with first. Mikawa’s squadron approached the sound from the northwest in the early hours of Aug. 9, threading between Savo Island and the coast. Two Allied picket destroyers, USSBlueand USSRalph Talbot, were stationed northwest of the sound to provide early warning of any approaching surface force, and their surface search radars had a physical detection horizon of roughly 19,000 yards. At 0053 hours, IJN Chokai’s lookouts spotted the USS Blue at 10,900 yards, but Mikawa ordered his squadron to hold fire to preserve the element of surprise. Over the next 45 minutes, the Japanese column silently closed to torpedo range of the southern group of Allied cruisers, passing within 5,000 yards of USS Blue. Neither Allied picket screen detected the oncoming Japanese ships. Their radar equipment was working properly. Their operators simply could not use it effectively. They had spent two exhausting days scanning the skies for aircraft and had little experience interpreting surface contacts, where returns from ships blended with returns from islands and reefs. In principle, the pickets should have provided at least 45 minutes of warning, but lack of preparation and experience meant none was given. Crutchley had divided his ships into three separate groups stationed at different points around the sound. The groups were too widely dispersed to support one another, and the disposition itself reflected a fundamental misreading of the threat. Crutchley designed his three-group arrangement primarily to ensure anti-submarine coverage of the sound’s entry points. The nearest Japanese submarine was in fact hundreds of miles away. That evening, Crutchley left his flagship HMAS Australia to attend a conference with Turner, delegating command to Capt. Howard Bode of USS Chicago, who promptly went to sleep. Crutchley failed to inform the other captains, including the senior officer, Capt. Frederick Riefkohl of USS Vincennes. The Allied cruisers were not at general quarters. Officers were in their bunks. Gun crews were not at their stations. The cruiser USS Quincy had left its scout aircraft fueled and sitting on its catapult rails rather than launching them or draining the fuel tanks, as standard procedure dictated when battle was expected. At 0144 hrs, the Japanese launched torpedoes. At 0150 hrs, they opened fire. What followed was more a rout than a battle. Japanese cruisers used searchlights, star shells, and aircraft-dropped flares to illuminate the Allied ships. At close range, their eight-inch guns caused devastating damage: Japanese gunners achieved a hit rate of eight to twelve percent and landed their initial hits within the first few salvos. Because the Allies had been caught at reduced readiness, Mikawa’s squadron had several minutes of completely unopposed fire, inflicting disproportionate damage before the Allied crews could respond. Sailors jolted from sleep had to navigate narrow passages and stairways to reach their battle stations. Early hits on these compartments blocked many from ever arriving, degrading each ship’s fighting capacity well beyond the apparent physical damage. The Japanese struck the southern group first. HMAS Canberra was hit so quickly and so hard that it sank without ever firing a shot. USS Chicago took severe damage, and Bode, suddenly awakened with the battle already raging, focused on maneuvering his own damaged ship rather than commanding the squadron. He withdrew USS Chicago from the fight before its main battery fired a single round, and he neither issued orders to the other ships nor alerted them to the attack. Within minutes, the southern group had effectively ceased to exist as a fighting force. With the southern approach cleared, Mikawa could have pressed on toward the transport anchorage. Instead, he turned his column north toward the second group of Allied cruisers patrolling between Savo Island and Tulagi. It was a decision consistent with his training. Japanese night doctrine emphasized destroying the enemy’s combat power first — the transports could wait. The northern group fared no better than the southern. The crews of USS Astoria, USS Vincennes, and USS Quincy were caught asleep and scrambling. When USS Quincy’s fueled scout planes were hit by eight-inch shells, the resulting fires illuminated not just USS Quincy but every Allied ship nearby, giving the Japanese gunners targets they could see without searchlights. USS Astoria’s gunnery officer initially ordered return fire, but the ship’s captain countermanded the order. He could not tell whether the ships firing on him were Japanese or friendly, and he did not trust the radar picture to resolve the question. Like many Allied officers, he seems to have harbored a deep skepticism toward the new technology. Radar operators were inexperienced, and their reports often seemed ambiguous or contradictory. In the chaos of a night engagement that no one had anticipated, the captain chose caution over the uncertain word of a radar screen. He was not wrong to worry about fratricide. The destroyer USS Bagley, disoriented in the confusion, launched torpedoes into the burning HMAS Canberra, mistaking her for a Japanese vessel. The disparity in realized firepower tells a stark story about the battle. The Allies had more guns, but theJapanese fired nearly four timesas many total rounds during the battle. 32 Japanese eight-inch main battery guns fired 1,020 rounds. 44 Allied eight-inch guns fired 107. By 0216 hrs, it was over. Mikawa ordered his ships to cease fire and withdraw. All three cruisers of the northern group, USS Astoria, USS Vincennes, and USS Quincy, sank within hours of the engagement, joining HMAS Canberra on the floor of what would come to be known as Ironbottom Sound. Mikawa had annihilated the Allied screening force. The transports off the Guadalcanal beaches were now virtually defenseless. Yet rather than press on to finish the job he had set out to do, Mikawa chose to withdraw. His squadron had become scattered during the engagement with the northern group and reassembling it in darkness would take time. Exposing his cruisers to carrier aircraft in daylight seemed too great a risk. It was a reasonable decision given what Mikawa knew. But it may have been the choice that saved the Guadalcanal campaign. The transports survived, and though they departed earlier than planned,enough supplieshad been unloaded for the marines to hold their beachhead until reinforcements arrived. Had Mikawa pressed on to destroy the transports, or had the Japanese reinforced more aggressively before American logistics caught up, the beachhead might not have held, and Guadalcanal may have been lost. The Battle of Savo Island was the opening act of a naval campaign that would become one of the most intense stretches of surface combat in naval history. The shock of the loss at Savo forced a reckoning within the U.S. Navy. The brutal campaign for Guadalcanal that followed became the proving ground where the service developed, at great cost, the institutional reforms, tactics, and training needed to fight coordinated surface engagements against a skilled adversary. Between Aug. 1942 and Feb. 1943, the U.S. and Imperial Japanese navies fought seven major surface engagements in the confined seas north of Guadalcanal as part of the broader Solomon Islands campaign. The learning curve was steep. Atthe Battle of Cape Esperancein October, the U.S. Navy won its first night surface action of the campaign, using radar to detect the Japanese force at long range, though continued confusion over the radar picture nearly squandered the advantage. At theNaval Battle of Guadalcanalin November, two rear admirals were killed, and the fighting was so close that ships missed colliding by yards, with one officer comparing the action to abarroom brawl after the lights had been shot out. At theBattle of Tassafarongadays later, Japanese destroyers armed with Long Lance torpedoes crippled three American heavy cruisers and sank a fourth, despite being detected on radar first. Yet out of these costly engagements came a series of innovations that would transform how the Navy fought at sea. The most consequential innovation was the Combat Information Center, a dedicated shipboard facility that integrated input from radar, radio, and sonar into a single real-time picture of the battlespace. Before the Combat Information Center, individual radar operators sent raw reports up the chain and hoped for the best. Afterward, trained teams processed sensor data continuously, updated tactical plots, and fed synthesized information directly to the ship’s captain. This freed the captain to make decisions rather than interpret data. New tactics followed. Officers in the Solomons theater began experimenting with independently maneuvering destroyer divisions coordinated through the Combat Information Center, using one group to draw fire while another struck from an unexpected direction. These tactics required trust in the system, confidence in the radar picture, and extensive rehearsal. By late 1943,squadrons in the South Pacific had all three. The results were dramatic. In Nov. 1943 at theBattle of Cape St. George, the U.S. Navy detected the enemy first, fired first, and coordinated its fires across independently maneuvering groups. The same radar technology that had been ineffective at Savo Island became a war-winning advantage once crews learned how to use it and commanders learned how to trust it. The institutional reforms born in the Solomons did not stay there. The Combat Information Center became standard across the fleet, and the doctrinal lessons about radar integration, coordinated maneuver, and decentralized command shaped how the U.S. Navy fought for the remainder of the Pacific war, from the Philippine Sea to Leyte Gulf to Okinawa. What began as a desperate response to catastrophe at Savo Island became part of the foundation on which the Navy achieved sea control in the western Pacific. Among the veterans who fought in the waters around Guadalcanal, the battle was known simply as the “Battle of the Five Sitting Ducks,” a name capturing the bitterness of a defeat that felt, to the men who survived it, entirely avoidable. The U.S. Navy was slow to examine the defeat openly. The Navy conveneda formal board of inquiryunder Rear Adm. Arthur Hepburn which concluded in 1943 that the defeat stemmed from surprise, inadequate readiness, and poor dispositions. The board recommended censure for Capt. Bode but stopped short of holding senior officers accountable. Its report was classified for years. The most detailed tactical reconstruction,prepared by Capt. Richard Bates, for the Naval War College in 1950, remained a government document with limited circulation. What the public got instead was theofficial naval history written by Rear Adm. Samuel Eliot Morison in 1949, which framed the defeat largely in terms of the decisions and errors of individual officers on the night itself. Later research drawing onJapaneseandAustraliansources revealed just how much the standard American narrative had missed about the doctrinal and institutional roots of the defeat. While earlier accounts had asked what went wrong on the night of Aug. 9, this later work asked why two navies that had spent decades preparing for war against each other arrived at Savo Island so unevenly prepared to fight. The answer pointed beyond the officers on the bridge that night and towards the training pipelines, command structures, and technology integration practices that shaped what those officers could and could not do once the shooting started. For much of the postwar period, the Battle of Savo Island lived in the shadow of Midway and the land fighting on Guadalcanal. The carrier battle offered a story of ingenuity and decisive victory. The Marine Corps’ campaign provided one of endurance and heroism. Savo Island offered neither. It was a story of institutional failure, and it fit uncomfortably within the broader narrative of American triumph in the Pacific. Yet looking back, Savo Island carries lessons that extend well beyond the Solomon Islands in 1942. The first concerns technology. Acquiring a weapon or a sensor is not the same as knowing how to use it. Radar should have been decisive at Savo Island, but the crews operating it had never been trained to perform the complex chain of interpretation and communication that the technology required under realistic conditions.Today’s systems are even more complexand require operators, maintainers, and commanders who understand not just what the technology can do in theory but how it functions under the confusion, fatigue, and time pressure of combat. If the U.S. Navy assumes that its technological edge will translate automatically into battlefield performance, it risks repeating the error that cost four heavy cruisers in a single night in 1942. The second is about command and organization. The Allied chain of command at Savo Island was fragmented across multiple headquarters, multiple nationalities, and multiple levels of authority, none of which communicated effectively with the others. The U.S. Navy today operates in a similarly complex environment of joint and multinational command structures. The institutional reforms that followed Savo Island succeeded because they addressed the organizational roots of the problem rather than simply blaming individuals. Future adaptations will need to do the same. Finally, Savo Island is a reminder that outcomes in naval combat can be extraordinarily sensitive to small variations in human behavior: A few minutes of warning, a few thousand yards of repositioning, a single decision to concentrate rather than divide a squadron. None of these involves any change in the hardware on either side, yet any one of them may have been sufficient to transform a catastrophic defeat into a decisive victory at Savo Island. China would be wise to consider this before concluding that numerical superiority at sea guarantees the outcome of a future war. And the United States would be wise not to assume that its technological advantages will do the work on their own. John Severini is a Ph.D. student in government at Georgetown University. Stephen Biddle is a professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University and an adjunct senior fellow for defense policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. Image:Wikimedia Commons
A product integration between Veracity by DNV and Veson’s IMOS connects verified emissions data with core operational workflows A product integration between Veracity by DNV and Veson’s IMOS connects verified emissions data with core operational workflows
OSLO, Norway and BOSTON, April 27, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Maritime data and freight management solutions provider, Veson Nautical (Veson), has announced a strategic partnership with independent industry cloud platform, Veracity by DNV, to bring verified emissions data into the heart of operational and commercial shipping workflows. The product integration connects Veson’s IMOS with the Veracity platform, enabling emissions figures confirmed by DNV to flow directly into IMOS. Within IMOS, these figures are clearly tagged as verified and integrated directly into voyage financials and P&L — reducing reliance on disconnected systems and manual re-entry. This first-of-its-kind integration addresses the growing need for maritime operators to incorporate compliance and automated data quality checks into daily voyage decisions, P&L tracking, and regulatory reporting. By embedding these inputs directly into live P&L calculations, shipping companies can improve the accuracy of voyage results, reach settlement faster, and reduce audit risk. “This collaboration between Veson and Veracity by DNV is an exciting development for us at Hafnia,” said Michael Rasmussen, General Manager, Pool Management at Hafnia. “We have historically spent significant time toggling between systems to reconcile emissions data. Having verified, accurate data in one place has the potential to streamline that workflow and make it easier for our teams to work with trusted figures in their day-to-day operations." Looking ahead, the partnership will further expand into an end-to-end emissions reporting and verification workflow. Operational vessel data can be automatically transferred from IMOS to DNV’s Veracity platform, where it can be quality-assured in line with the Operational Vessel Data (OVD) standard and passed to DNV’s verification services in Emissions Connect. This will provide joint customers with a continuous data flow from data collection to verified emissions data, which can be used to meet evolving frameworks such as EU ETS, FuelEU Maritime, and additional commercial use cases. “The industry is moving toward a model where verified data is central to both compliance and commercial performance,” said Sean Riley, President and Chief Operating Officer at Veson Nautical. “With DNV we are connecting those two worlds, bringing trusted emissions data directly into the workflows that drive day-to-day decisions and voyage P&L outcomes.” “Together with Veson, we are demonstrating how verified data can unlock new value in commercial operations,” said Mikkel Skou, Executive Director, Veracity by DNV. “This partnership is a strong example of our envisioned maritime data ecosystem in action; a collaboration that enables our common customers to use their data as a trusted foundation for better decisions, stronger collaboration, and more efficient operations.” The partnership builds on Veracity by DNV’s extensive data network, which has connectivity to more than 65,000 vessels worldwide through automated access to verified data. As part of Veson’s expanding Platform Partner Network, DNV extends that reach into the core system where maritime commerce is managed — giving shipping companies access to trusted data within a more connected ecosystem. About Veson NauticalVeson Nautical empowers the global maritime industry to navigate compounding complexity across trade, regulation, and operations. By combining trusted maritime data with purpose-built workflows, Veson enables confident decision-making to manage risk and maximize performance. Serving more than 38,000 users across 2,400 companies in over 100 countries, Veson delivers solutions that place contracts and data at the center of maritime commerce. For more information, visitwww.veson.com. About DNV DNV is the world’s leading classification society and a recognized advisor for the maritime industry. The company enhances safety, quality, energy efficiency and environmental performance of the global shipping industry – across all vessel types and offshore structures. DNV invests heavily in research and development to find solutions, together with the industry, that address strategic, operational or regulatory challenges. About Veracity by DNVVeracity is DNV’s independent industry cloud platform, set out to deliver trust and connectivity to industry digitalization and decarbonization. It brings together key players in the maritime and energy industries, to drive business innovation and digital transformation over a common data truth. Today, more than 65 000 vessels are easily connected to the platform through the partner program and 50 000 users engage monthly over Veracity, enjoying frictionless connectivity through the exchange of datasets, APIs, applications, and insights. Visitwww.veracity.comto discover more. For Media enquiries: Veson Public Relationspress@veson.com Veracity by DNVHead of CommunicationsPhone: +47 4003 9672Email:gabriela.stojicevic@dnv.com A photo accompanying this announcement is available athttps://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/6f117f11-95c0-45f2-8699-98a2ced03b1a
Napoli, il nuovo piano regolatore portuale mette a rischio l’ambiente e la salute napolimonitor.it
Mentre la giunta comunale di Napoli annuncia la bonifica degli arenili di San Giovanni a Teduccio e promette di restituire il litorale alla cittadinanza entro l’estate 2026, lungo la stessa costa avanza un’altra trasformazione, molto meno visibile nel dibattito pubblico.
Il Nuovo Piano Regolatore Portuale (PRP), presentato alla fine del 2024 e ora in fase di valutazione ambientale strategica (VAS), ridisegna profondamente la geografia del porto. Da una parte il “porto storico”, in corrispondenza del centro cittadino, già orientato al traffico passeggeri (crociere, traghetti), viene rafforzato in questa funzione e accompagnato da interventi di valorizzazione del rapporto porto-città. Tra questi, l’“affaccio urbano” e nuove passeggiate, in linea con l’immagine turistica della città. Proseguendo lungo la costa, l’intera fascia portuale prossima alla stazione centrale viene liberata dalle attività commerciali e riconfigurata anche questa intorno a funzioni turistiche. Dall’altra parte, spostandosi progressivamente verso est, oltre la linea ferroviaria, prende forma il “porto operativo”, dove si intensificano le attività logistiche e industriali, in particolare il traffico di container e prodotti petroliferi. Unica eccezione in questo disegno duale, che separa e gerarchizza centro turistico e periferia produttiva, è il nuovo porto turistico previsto nell’area dell’ex Corradini, destinato al diporto stanziale di circa quattrocento imbarcazioni. Una riorganizzazione presentata come necessaria, ma che solleva interrogativi su quali esigenze stia effettivamente soddisfacendo e su chi ne trarrà beneficio.
È proprio nell’area orientale, lungo il litorale di San Giovanni a Teduccio, già segnato da una lunga storia di violenza ambientale, che si addensano le trasformazioni più rilevanti, con il rischio di segnare in modo irreversibile il rapporto di questa parte della città (e dei suoi abitanti) con il mare.
Il cuore di questa trasformazione è l’estensione e potenziamento della Darsena Levante, destinata a diventare il principale hub container del porto, con l’ambizione di riposizionare Napoli nelle reti logistiche globali. L’intervento prevede il ripristino della cassa di colmata di Vigliena e il tombamento della Darsena Petroli, operazioni che consentiranno di ampliare significativamente (quasi raddoppiare) le superfici operative e la capacità di movimentazione delle merci. Parallelamente, si prevede lo spostamento del polo energetico “nell’estremità orientale della Darsena di Levante”, ovvero nei pressi della spiaggia pubblica di Vigliena e più vicino all’abitato di San Giovanni a Teduccio. Il nuovo polo energetico sarà accessibile da terra, attraverso via Detta dell’Innominata, e sarà affiancato da nuove infrastrutture dedicate, tra cui diversi punti di attracco per navi fino a 250 metri di lunghezza e al largo della diga foranea, proprio di fronte all’ex Corradini, due mono-boe per l’attracco delle petroliere più grandi. Formalmente, i volumi di traffico dei prodotti petroliferi, che già consentono alla città di avere un ruolo strategico nei flussi energetici globali, resterebbero inalterati, in attesa della “definitiva delocalizzazione dei depositi costieri” prevista nel Piano Regolatore Generale del 2004. A questa riorganizzazione funzionale, si accompagnano il potenziamento della viabilità portuale, la riorganizzazione dei varchi di accesso e il rilancio del collegamento ferroviario. Quest’ultimo rappresenta un intervento chiave per il funzionamento del nuovo terminal di Levante, destinato a connettere l’area portuale con la rete nazionale e con gli interporti di Nola e Marcianise.
Il piano introduce anche una serie di interventi presentati come coerenti con gli obiettivi di sviluppo sostenibile e transizione ecologica. Il principale è il cosiddetto cold ironing, ovvero l’elettrificazione delle banchine, che dovrebbe consentire alle navi attraccate di spegnere i motori e collegarsi alla rete elettrica, riducendo le emissioni in fase di sosta. Ma nella configurazione attualmente prevista, il sistema riuscirebbe ad alimentare contemporaneamente poche navi di grandi dimensioni, e comunque solo quelle già predisposte all’allaccio alla rete elettrica. Si ipotizza, inoltre, che l’energia necessaria possa essere interamente prodotta da fonti rinnovabili, ma questa prospettiva non è accompagnata da indicazioni su localizzazione, dimensionamento e finanziamento degli impianti, lasciando aperta la questione della sua effettiva realizzabilità. Accanto a questo, il piano prevede interventi più circoscritti, come l’introduzione di due navette elettriche per la mobilità interna al porto, l’installazione di impianti fotovoltaici su alcuni edifici, l’illuminazione a Led e, in forma sperimentale, un dispositivo per la produzione di energia dal moto ondoso, in grado di coprire soltanto una quota marginale del fabbisogno energetico del porto.
Si tratta di misure che tentano, in maniera anche un po’ goffa, di offrire compensazioni alla strategia espansiva e dare un’immagine ecologica a un piano che di ecologico ha ben poco. Lo stesso Rapporto ambientale preliminare predisposto dall’Autorità di Sistema Portuale del Mare Tirreno Centrale (AdSP) ammette esplicitamente che lo sviluppo previsto potrebbe comportare un aumento del consumo di energia e acqua potabile, la crescita della produzione di rifiuti e acque reflue, nonché un peggioramento delle già compresse condizioni ambientali, dalla qualità dell’aria al rumore, fino alla pressione sulla salute umana. Accanto a questi, il piano riconosce la trasformazione significativa del paesaggio costiero e l’occupazione dei fondali marini, con la possibile riduzione degli habitat. Ma il passaggio più significativo riguarda proprio i possibili effetti sulla salute. Nel documento si legge di “un’alterazione del contesto da cui potrebbero dipendere un incremento di morbosità e mortalità”: una formulazione che introduce un rischio sanitario rilevante, ma lo colloca all’interno di un registro tecnico che tende a normalizzarlo, quasi come un effetto collaterale da leggere tra le righe di un bugiardino. Non sono previste misure di contenimento o contrasto dei potenziali impatti negativi elencati, rimandate a fasi successive, mentre si insiste sulla valorizzazione degli spazi di maggiore pregio nel porto storico, sul guadagno in termini di competitività e sviluppo, e sulla promessa di effetti positivi in termini occupazionali, riproponendo una retorica già ben nota.
È proprio in questa retorica dello sviluppo che i costi ambientali e sanitari non vengono negati, ma ricondotti dentro un orizzonte di inevitabilità: il prezzo necessario di una trasformazione presentata come indispensabile. In questo quadro, anche lo spazio del confronto pubblico tende a comprimersi. Nonostante la rilevanza del piano per il futuro della città, il dibattito intorno al nuovo PRP appare finora confinato dentro circuiti tecnico-istituzionali, con il coinvolgimento marginale di chi è chiamato a convivere con i suoi impatti, in modo particolare i residenti che abitano a poche decine di metri dal nuovo terminal, che hanno già denunciato vibrazioni, polveri, rumore e lesioni agli edifici.
Alcune delle criticità ambientali sono state sollevate anche nell’ambito della procedura di valutazione ambientale strategica, tuttora in corso. A oltre un anno dall’avvio (dicembre 2024), il piano è ancora in fase di istruttoria tecnica presso la Commissione VIA/VAS del ministero dell’ambiente, senza che sia stato espresso il parere motivato definitivo necessario alla sua approvazione. Diversi enti, pur non bloccando il piano, hanno evidenziato la necessità di approfondimenti sostanziali su impatti ambientali e sanitari, traffico, dragaggi, sedimenti contaminati, biodiversità, paesaggio, patrimonio archeologico e compatibilità urbanistica. In particolare, il comune di Napoli ha richiesto ulteriori valutazioni sugli impatti ambientali e sanitari e ha sollevato dubbi sulla compatibilità urbanistica di alcune opere previste fuori dal perimetro portuale. L’Arpac ha sottolineato l’assenza di una valutazione quantitativa completa degli effetti ambientali e la necessità di un sistema di monitoraggio strutturato. Il ministero dell’ambiente e della sicurezza energetica ha richiamato la necessità che ogni intervento sia compatibile con la normativa sui siti contaminati, evidenziando la criticità delle operazioni di dragaggio e della movimentazione dei sedimenti. Il ministero della cultura ha espresso perplessità sugli impatti paesaggistici e archeologici, in particolare sulle trasformazioni più invasive legate all’ampliamento della Darsena di Levante. La commissione tecnica ha invece evidenziato come il piano non analizzi in modo adeguato gli impatti cumulativi con opere già realizzate o in corso, né consideri scenari alternativi, inclusa l’ipotesi di non intervento.
Eppure, mentre il procedimento resta aperto, la trasformazione è già in corso e prendono forma alcune delle opere che costituiscono la base fisica del nuovo assetto portuale previsto dal PRP. Si tratta, peraltro, di interventi che si inseriscono in una traiettoria progettuale avviata oltre vent’anni fa, con un accordo istituzionale che prevedeva l’espansione dell’area commerciale e l’approvazione, nel 2008, del progetto del nuovo terminal contenitori da parte del ministero dell’ambiente. Nell’area di Vigliena, fulcro dell’espansione prevista dal piano, sono già stati completati il dragaggio di una parte dei fondali portuali con conferimento dei sedimenti (in parte contaminati) nella cassa di colmata, insieme all’adeguamento della Darsena di Levante in terminal container. Queste opere, inquadrate come interventi di ripristino e messa in sicurezza, non sono state sottoposte a una valutazione di impatto ambientale (VIA) completa, ma a una procedura preliminare con prescrizioni, la cui attuazione risulta solo parziale secondo la documentazione ufficiale. Accanto a queste, risultano in fase di collaudo il prolungamento e rafforzamento della diga foranea Duca d’Aosta, che consentirà l’accesso a navi di dimensioni maggiori. Sono in corso, inoltre, i lavori di cold ironing e il potenziamento dei collegamenti ferroviari e stradali interni.
A sostenere questa trasformazione, un intreccio di risorse, pubbliche e private, così complesso da essere difficilmente districabile. Il Pnrr è evocato come principale motore della trasformazione, collocando il progetto dentro una cornice europea di modernizzazione che lo rende, almeno in apparenza, più legittimo. In realtà, dai documenti dell’Autorità portuale, il contributo diretto dei fondi europei risulta concentrato su interventi marginali. Le opere, incluse quelle più rilevanti sul piano infrastrutturale, risultano invece finanziate prevalentemente dal Fondo Complementare, ovvero da risorse nazionali collegate al Pnrr, ma di fatto non soggette agli stessi vincoli, strumenti di monitoraggio e livelli di controllo. A novembre 2025, il ministero delle infrastrutture ha annunciato l’arrivo di circa sessanta milioni destinati ai porti di Napoli e Salerno da impiegare in opere già in corso, tra cui il completamento della cassa di colmata di Vigliena e il rafforzamento della diga Duca d’Aosta, da spendere entro giugno 2026. Si tratterebbe di finanziamenti integrativi, con l’ambizione di accelerare la realizzazione delle opere, ma al momento non c’è traccia di alcun atto formale che ne certifichi l’effettiva assegnazione. A completare il quadro, si aggiungono ulteriori risorse pubbliche (come fondi Fsc e Por-Fesr), stanziamenti diretti dell’Autorità portuale e investimenti dei concessionari privati, tra cui Conateco (gruppo Msc), che ha previsto impegni economici significativi per lo sviluppo del nuovo terminal. Il risultato è un sistema frammentato e multilivello, che non solo rende difficile ricostruire con precisione chi finanzia cosa, ma contribuisce anche a ridurre la trasparenza e ad attenuare le possibilità di controllo pubblico.
Altrettanto frammentato e opaco è il quadro di interessi economici che sostengono e orientano il nuovo assetto portuale, rendendo la distinzione tra pianificazione pubblica e iniziativa privata sempre più sfumata. Presentato come risposta a esigenze di interesse generale, il piano appare in realtà strettamente allineato alle strategie di espansione dei soggetti privati che operano nello scalo. Questi non sono soltanto beneficiari diretti, ma attori in grado di incidere concretamente su tempi, priorità e condizioni degli interventi, grazie al controllo delle infrastrutture esistenti, alla disponibilità di capitali e alla capacità di orientare il discorso pubblico.
Da un lato, i terminalisti, in gran parte riconducibili al gruppo Msc, interessati a rendere operativa nel più breve tempo possibile la Darsena di Levante. Tra questi, proprio Conateco, principale terminalista, che nel 2006 aveva già ottenuto una concessione cinquantennale sull’area del nuovo terminal contenitori, a fronte dell’impegno a investire oltre duecento milioni. Il suo amministratore delegato è intervenuto più volte pubblicamente per sollecitare l’accelerazione dei lavori, presentandoli come urgenti e decisivi non solo per il futuro del porto, ma per l’intero sviluppo economico regionale. Dall’altro lato, un attore chiave è Kuwait Petroleum Italia (Q8), che gestisce la Darsena Petroli, il cui ruolo è emerso con chiarezza nel conflitto in corso intorno alla realizzazione dei collegamenti ferroviari. Il tracciato previsto, necessario per l’operatività del nuovo terminal, interferisce con il sistema di tubazioni che serve i depositi petroliferi, rendendone necessario lo spostamento. Secondo alcune ricostruzioni giornalistiche, Q8 avrebbe subordinato questa operazione alla richiesta di un’estensione della concessione per altri ventitré anni, aprendo un vero e proprio braccio di ferro con i terminalisti e con l’Autorità portuale. Qui è opportuno ricordare che la delocalizzazione delle attività petrolifere era prevista dal Piano Regolatore Generale del 2004, ma un accordo del 2006 ne ha di fatto rinviato l’attuazione, garantendo a Q8 una proroga delle concessioni per vent’anni. Oggi, a scadenza di quel periodo, l’esigenza di portare avanti i lavori si trasforma in una leva negoziale attraverso la quale la società petrolifera può rinegoziare la propria permanenza nel porto. Nel mezzo si collocano l’AdSP, formalmente responsabile della pianificazione e dell’attuazione degli interventi, e il governo centrale, che contribuisce a definirne priorità e tempi.
Queste dinamiche mostrano come il Nuovo Piano Regolatore Portuale non si limiti a ridisegnare lo spazio del porto, ma contribuisca a consolidare rapporti di potere e gerarchie spaziali già esistenti, confermando questa parte di città (e non solo) come lo spazio in cui si materializzano gli effetti di scelte fortemente condizionate dagli interessi dei grandi operatori economici, più che dai bisogni locali. Il tutto accompagnato da una narrazione opaca e selettiva, che presenta la trasformazione come necessaria e inevitabile, riducendone al tempo stesso la visibilità nel dibattito pubblico. Nel frattempo, gli abitanti restano ai margini di questo processo, fuori dai luoghi in cui queste scelte si definiscono e neppure pienamente a conoscenza delle trasformazioni che incideranno in modo diretto e duraturo sulle loro condizioni di vita. (giorgia scognamiglio)
di Bernardo Iovene
Collaborazione di Lidia Galeazzo
Immagini di Dario Parlapiano, Giovanni De Faveri, Alfredo Farina e Marco Ronca
Ricerca immagini di Tiziana Battisti
Grafica di Federico Ajello
Navi, emissioni e città sotto assedio
Le navi quando sostano nei porti restano con i motori accesi per garantire energia a bordo, ma i camini scaricano nell’aria delle città particolato fine, ossido di azoto e anidride solforosa. Una nube che investe direttamente le città. Due studi epidemiologici indicano che in città portuali come Ancona e Civitavecchia l’indice di mortalità è più alto legato proprio alle emissioni delle navi. È un problema comune a tutte le città che si affacciano sulla zona portuale. Sulla carta l’Europa è intervenuta, infatti da maggio 2025 nel Mediterraneo è obbligatorio utilizzare carburanti con un contenuto di zolfo allo 0,1 per cento. Ma nella pratica oltre il 90 per cento delle navi traghetto, da crociera e porta container continuano a bruciare olio combustibile fino al 3,5 per cento di zolfo perché hanno installato un sistema di lavaggio dei fumi, gli scrubber, prelevano tonnellate di acqua dal mare riscaricandola a mare aperto e perfino nei porti con i residui di idrocarburi policiclici aromatici, alcalini, black carbon, sostanze che vanno a finire nella vita marina e quindi nel pesce.
Per ridurre le emissioni, l’Italia punta sull’elettrificazione delle banchine, finanziata con il PNRR, permetterà alle navi nei porti di collegarsi alla rete elettrica terrestre e spegnere i motori. Un sollievo parziale per gli abitanti delle città portuali che respirano metri cubi di biossido d’azoto specie durante le manovre di arrivo e partenza delle navi. Ma anche qui, la realtà è più complessa, servono grandi quantità di energia, le infrastrutture sono limitate e i costi restano attualmente più alti rispetto ai combustibili fossili.
29 aprile 2026: ci ha scritto la società Cavotec, gruppo ingegneristico che sviluppa soluzioni di elettrificazione e automazione per il settore portuale e marittimo, per precisare i dettagli tecnici del sistema "Shore Power" , mostrato nel servizio al porto di Malta, di loro progettazione e realizzazione. Qui i particolari
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The HP OmniBook Ultra is a Panther Lake beast, a thin and light Copilot+ PC that surpasses the MacBook Air in some key ways.
The post HP OmniBook Ultra Review: Nearly Perfect Panther Lake Powerhouse appeared first on Thurrott.com.
The HP OmniBook Ultra is a Panther Lake beast, a thin and light Copilot+ PC that surpasses the MacBook Air in some key ways. HP went in a different direction with the OmniBook Ultra and to good effect: The form factor is a familiar clamshell design, of course, but it has a unique and handsome design with sharp, polished edges. It’s also incredibly thin, with a wedge shape that gets even thinner toward the front. But even the rear of the OmniBook is a bit thinner than a MacBook Air. There are two color choices for the aluminum OmniBook, the Silk Sand of the review unit and Eclipse Gray. And in each case the plastic keyboard keys are a lighter color than the body, giving it a nice contrasty look. Where the sides of the laptop are a shiny, brushed aluminum that scratches up over time, the surfaces are matte with an anti-fingerprint finish that only partially eliminates skin oils. It’s not as bad as the typical ThinkPad in that regard, but it’s still noticeable. Most of the other design touches are subtle, like the premium HP logo on the outside of the display lid and the classy and shiny OmniBook Ultra logo on the right wrist rest. But the blue pinhole light on the power button/key in the upper right of the keyboard is a curious decision. It’s overly bright, but at least you can’t see it when the laptop is closed. HP describes the OmniBook Ultra as the world’s most durably slim notebook, and its forge-stamped aluminum chassis survived 11 MIL-STD durability tests while also making it much easier to open the thing up for repairs and upgrades. The 14-inch 3K (2880 x 1800) multitouch OLED display panel that HP provides with the OmniBook Ultra is truly impressive. It nails all the OLED basics with glossy bright and vibrant colors and the deepest blacks, but it also delivers ultra-wide viewing angles, a 120 Hz variable refresh rate, low blue light capabilities, 100 percent DCI-P3 color gamut coverage, and Gorilla Glass 3 protection while outputting 500 nits of brightness for SDR content and 1100 nits for HDR. The display still delights after four months of use. You can crank up the brightness to thwart reflections if necessary, but that’s rarely been necessary. It performs equally well across all the productivity, creator, software development, and gaming activities I engage in. The display’s bezels are notably small on the left and right sides, helping HP achieve a better-than-average 91 percent screen-to-body ratio. But the display doesn’t tilt back very far, and it’s not clear why. Most laptops I review have displays that can lay flat or nearly so, but this one doesn’t even come close. The OmniBook Ultra can be configured with an Intel Core Ultra 7 356H, Core Ultra 9 386H, or Core Ultra X9 388H “Panther Lake” processor, the latter of which is Intel’s most impressive mobile offering to date. Each features a 16-core microprocessor with 4 performance cores, 8 efficient cores, and 4 low power efficient cores, and a 50 TOPS NPU. And each operates at a range of 15 to 80 watts depending on the load, with a 25-watt base power dissipation. But it’s with the integrated graphics where things get really interesting: The 356H and 386H both include 4-core Intel integrated graphics that are inline with the graphics in previous-generation Core Ultra Series 2 processors, while the X9 388H delivers the stunningly good 12-core Intel Arc B390 integrated GPU. It rivals the performance of dedicated graphics, and this is the processor that HP provided in the review unit. Depending on the processor choice, you can get an OmniBook Ultra with 16 or 32 GB of 9600 MT/s LPDDR5X RAM, and there are 512 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB PCIe Gen5 NVME M.2-based SSD storage options. The review unit provides 32 GB of RAM and 1 TB of storage. Day-to-day performance is terrific, obviously. But the performance can be breathtaking, too.Call of Duty: Black Ops 7runs at about 75 FPS at native resolution and the display quality is excellent. The dedicated Nvidia graphics inthe Lenovo ThinkPad P1 I recently reviewedare a step up, but the OmniBook Ultra delivers one of the best gaming experiences I’ve ever had with integrated graphics. I don’t have a laptop based on the latest generation AMD Zen 5 chip here in Mexico, but this looks and feels comparable. The detail I see is incredible. To keep this beast quiet and cool, HP uses active cooling via its first-ever compact vapor chamber design. From the outside, it’s all very familiar. The air intake fans are on the bottom, aided by rubber feet that stretch across much of the PC’s width while elevating it and providing a firm grip. And then the exhaust is along the rear of the lower deck, below the display hinge. Overall, it works very well. In typical usage, the hum of the fans is so low I can’t hear it, and it’s only during and right after gameplay sessions that the fan noise really kicks in, as expected. I love the rubber feet on the bottom, not just for the necessary air circulation, but because they not four individual pucks, so they work well on just about any surface. Connectivity couldn’t be more modern, with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6. No issues there. Expansion is minimal but appropriate for the form factor and I love that HP put at least one USB-C port on each side of this laptop. There are three 40 Gbps Thunderbolt 4/USB4 Type-C ports, two on the right and one on the left. And then a 3.5 mm combo headphone/microphone jack on the left. The OmniBook Ultra provides quad discrete speakers, but it’s really just a stereo speaker setup, with two speakers on the front left side and two on the front right side, both bottom firing. The sound is excellent, crisp, and loud, though it starts to distort above 90 percent volume or so. That’s fine: It can easily fill a room with sound well below that threshold. Combine the solid audio capabilities with the OLED display, and you get a nicely immersive experience for movies and other videos. HP provides OmniBook Ultra buyers with reasonable hybrid work capabilities via a 5 MP Windows Hello ESS-compatible webcam and dual-array microphones. There’s a manual privacy slider for the webcam, unfortunately placed over the camera, and the standard microphone mute toggle via a function key on the keyboard. The webcam is better than the microphones, but you can fiddle with a lot of configurations in the bundled Poly Studio app, a rare example of a PC maker actually providing additional value through software. If you have an HP computer or a compatible peripheral, it’s worth spending time in Poly Studio. The full-sized and backlit keyboard on the OmniBook Ultra doesn’t just look good, it also offers an excellent typing experience with excellent feedback and longer-than-usual key throws I did get used to. The individual keys are bigger and a bit more spaced out from each other compared to previous generation OmniBook Ultras, but I don’t recall what that was like. This is great keyboard, regardless. Well, except for one miscue. Unfortunately, the backlighting is a problem, in part because of the light color used on the keys. The OmniBook Ultra supports two levels of backlighting, but no automatic mode, and I found myself fidgeting with it a lot because the backlight color is so close to that of the keys that it often washed out the letters. But switching it off rarely helped matters because the brightness of the screen would likewise wash out the non-backlit keys too. I can touch-type, of course, but I found it curious how regularly I struggled to see the letters on the keys. The keyboard does have flex when some typing, especially in its center. Granted, I’m a heavy-handed typist, and to be fair, this flex didn’t seem to impact usage at all. The haptic multitouch touchpad is also excellent, though I did need to disable three-finger gestures because I’m clumsy enough to trigger that when I mean to scroll. Once I got past that minor hurdle, all was well. As a Copilot+ PC, the OmniBook Ultra offers the best-possible security experience thanks to its Windows Hello Enhanced Sign-in Security (ESS) facial recognition capabilities and the other underlying protections you get with this platform. But there’s no fingerprint reader, which I feel should be included with any premium laptop these days. HP also gives you presence sensing capabilities that automatically dim the screen when you look away, which is annoying. But its other functions—turning off the screen and signing you out when you leave, waking the PC when you approach (which then makes Windows Hello-based facial recognition instant and automatic), and detecting when someone else is looking at the screen over your shoulder—are excellent. And while this isn’t security-related, the OmniBook Ultra also offers posture sensing via the webcam, which is fairly unique. Like other recent HP PCs, the OmniBook Ultra is sustainably made, in this case with up to 80 percent recycled aluminum, over 40 percent recycled plastic overall, ocean-bound plastic in the speaker enclosures and bezels, recycled metal in the display lid and both panels in the keyboard deck, and post-consumer recycled materials in the keyboard keycaps and scissors, and keyboard plate. You can remove the bottom panel of the OmniBook Ultra easily using the four exposed Philips head screws and a plastic pry tool or, in a pinch, a butter knife. From there, you can easily access the battery, the M.2 SSD, the keyboard, and other system components. Only the RAM isn’t replaceable (by itself) or upgradeable because of the integrated design of the processor. The OmniBook Ultra weighs just 2.81 pounds, which is terrific for a 14-inch laptop, and its 12.25 x 8.49 x 0.29/0.42 inch form factor is notably thin and svelte. This laptop is a joy to travel with and I used it on the way to Mexico in January, on the flights to and from Acapulco, and, more recently, on bus rides to and from Cuernavaca. Helping matters, the battery life is excellent for an x64-based laptop: I averaged between 8.5 and 9 hours of uptime per charge over the past four months. The 70 watt-hour battery supports fast charging with a 50 percent charge in about 45 minutes. More notable, perhaps, is HP’s new slimline 65-watt GaN mini USB charger with its detachable cable and folding charging prongs. This rectangular charger is smaller and less awkward than previous HP chargers, and it somehow manages to be attractive in its own right too. That said, its rectangular design means it may have difficulty staying plugged into a loose wall socket, as in many hotels. Sadly, instant-on performance and reliability were predictably poor. This is typical for Intel-based systems, suggesting that the processor maker still hasn’t gotten past this endemic issue. As is the case with other recent Intel-based laptops, I never knew what to expect when I opened the laptop lid regardless of how long it had been since I last used it. But the most common outcome was a slow full-boot process rather than the instant-on experience one expects. Facial recognition can likewise be slow or non-working at times, forcing me to use a PIN since the laptop doesn’t provide a fingerprint reader. This may not be the ideal time to mention this, but I made a point of coming to Mexico with none of my Snapdragon-based favorite laptops, and I only had one Snapdragon X Plus-based laptop waiting for me here. My goal was to reacquaint myself with the Intel portable PC experience and see whether there have been any reliability improvements in recent months. There haven’t been, not that I can tell, but it is interesting how one just gets used to this behavior. It is just the way most laptops work, so it becomes normal. With that in mind, I wasn’t overly distressed by the experience each time I opened the laptop lid. Sometimes, it just took longer to boot up, basically. But this is an area in which both AMD and Intel, especially, need to improve. The experience on Snapdragon X is much more predictable and reliable. The OmniBook Ultra is a premium laptop, but it’s also a consumer laptop, and so HP has taken a few liberties with its software loadout. The only truly offensive preinstall is McAfee, which requires two app uninstalls, one in Settings and one in Control Panel. You get all the usual HP utilities, and at least two, HP Support Assistant and Poly Studio, are quite useful. Windows 11 Home is standard, as are all the additional Copilot+ PC features. These days, laptop pricing can fluctuate quite a bit because of ongoing component shortages and premium PCs, like this Copilot+ PC are impacted even more because of their higher-end processors, RAM, storage, and display panels. In the good news department, HP and its retailing partners often hold sales, and it’s wise to wait on one before buying this or any other PC or consumer electronics product. As I write this, the pickings are slim on the HP website: This was different just two days ago, but I now only see a single, non-configurable OmniBook Ultra model with an Intel Core Ultra 7 356H processor, 16 GB of RAM, a 1 TB of storage costs about $1700. That’s roughly $400 more than I’d expect barring conditions, but it also doesn’t include the top-end CPU with the best GPU, and that would be my one condition for buying an Intel-based OmniBook Ultra. (HP sells Snapdragon X2-based models, too.) I don’t usually do this, but I also checked Amazon.com and Best Buy and didn’t come up with a single Intel-based OmniBook Ultra model for price comparisons. There’s a related OmniBook Ultra Flip, but it’s using the previous-generation Intel chips, and then the Snapdragon X2 versions. All too expensive. Good luck out there, this isn’t HP’s fault, but this is a terrible time to buy a laptop. Ignoring the pricing and availability issues as we must, the HP OmniBook Ultra is a terrific laptop for just about anyone. But it’s ideally suited for those who prize performance, style, and uptime, and should meet the needs of any productivity worker, creator, gamer, or developer. Intel’s Panther Lake platform, especially with the high-end GPU found in the review unit, is truly impressive, even with the usual reliability issues. And this laptop is a nearly perfect solution for those frequently on-the-go. This is one of my favorite laptops of 2026 so far, and I recommend it highly. Assuming, of course, you can find one and on sale. Pros ✔️ Handsome thin and light design ✔️ Bright, vibrant display ✔️ Incredible performance, especially for graphics ✔️ Excellent battery life for an x64 laptop ✔️ At least one USB-C port on each side Cons ❌ Typical Intel reliability issues ❌ Keyboard letters often hard to see
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