Ardente was the second and final member of the of destroyers built for the Italian in the 1910s.
Design
The ships of the Ardito class were long at the waterline and long overall, with a beam of and a draft of . They displaced standard and up to at full load. They had a crew of 4 officers and 65 enlisted men. The ships were powered by two Parsons steam turbines, with steam provided by four Thornycroft water-tube boilers. The engines were rated to produce for a top speed of , though in service they reached as high as from . At a more economical speed of , the ships could cruise for .
The ship carried an armament that consisted of a single gun and four guns, along with two torpedo tubes. The 102 mm gun was placed on the forecastle and the two of the 76 mm guns were mounted abreast the funnels, with the remaining pair at the stern. The torpedo tubes were in single mounts, both on the centerline.
Service history
Ardente was built at the shipyard in Livorno, and was launched on 15 December 1912.
After the end of the war, the ship had her armament revised to five 35-cal. guns, a single 35-cal. gun, and a pair of machine guns. The work was completed by 1920. Ardente was reclassified as a torpedo boat on 1 October 1929. She served well into the 1930s, before being struck from the naval register on 11 March 1937 and thereafter discarded.