DRASS Group

DRASS works underwater and has done so for a very long time. The Livorno group traces continuous operation to 1927 through the Galeazzi line, whose atmospheric diving suits reached 300 metres of sea water in the 1930s, and it still points to patents running back to the 1920s. Around 200 direct employees work across 13,000 square metres of covered facilities in Italy and Romania, with a commercial office in Dubai and legal entities registered in Rome. Four markets carry the business, namely defence, rescue, commercial diving and medical, with a smaller recreational line running alongside them.

Defence has become the fastest moving part. The DGK is a compact submarine built for shallow water around 25 to 30 metres, assembled in sections so it can travel by road for maintenance, fitted with an X-rudder and able to carry up to five tonnes of mission equipment including torpedoes, swimmer delivery vehicles and remotely operated vehicles. Italy's Ministry of Defence submitted a decree in March 2026 covering the transfer of six of them to Indonesia. The DS8 is a swimmer delivery vehicle that carries eight combat divers, and two went to Indonesia in February 2026. Leonardo integrated its Black Scorpion light torpedo onto the DS8 in 2024, and SH Defence agreed in 2023 to fit the vehicle into its Cube handling system. DRASS also builds underwater traffic control centres, developed with FLYSIGHT, and signed a memorandum with Kongsberg in June 2026 covering unmanned underwater vehicles, maritime surveillance and manned-unmanned teaming, bringing compact submarines, pressure-tolerant battery modules, periscopes and payload integration to the table.

Rescue is the older speciality and the harder engineering. The submarine rescue vehicle is a patented design built around a work-class remotely operated vehicle able to lift twenty survivors at a time, and the simpler submarine rescue capsule takes eleven. Around those sit the ST-236 ultra-deep and ST-230 deep rescue vessels, a deep rescue vehicle, a 25 metre multipurpose rescue and salvage vessel, a midget transportation and recovery barge, and a ventilation system that regenerates atmosphere, analyses it and provides heating to a trapped crew. The subsea rescue system developed with Saipem was selected by the Italian Navy for its SDO-SuRS submarine rescue ship.

Commercial diving and medicine rest on the same pressure engineering. The 100, 700 and 900 series saturation systems, the portable Minisat, diving bells, saturation chambers, life support systems, launch and recovery gear, control panels and a training simulator make up the diving catalogue, and the D-One helmet is sold under its own brand, recently verified to 350 metres of sea water. Hyperbaric reception facilities and oxygen therapy chambers serve the medical side, and a recreational range covers dive support boats and sport equipment. Welding, hydraulic systems, PLC control, gas management and electrical panel manufacture are all kept in house, which is unusual at this size and is the reason a firm of 200 people can hand a navy a turnkey rescue ship.