The U.S. Navy has increased the ceiling on a contract for AI-powered robotic inspection systems from $71 million to $300 million. This expansion with Pittsburgh-based Gecko Robotics marks a significant shift toward using technology to maintain warships, a move the company says is essential to keeping the fleet operational against a rapidly growing Chinese naval presence.
Jake Loosararian, CEO of Gecko Robotics, stated that while the United States may not out-manufacture vessels faster than China, it can "outsmart" the methods used to maintain and operate its existing ships. The Navy awarded the initial five-year, $71 million contract in March to deploy robotic inspection technology across the fleet. Under that agreement, Gecko was set to begin work on 18 ships in the U.S. Pacific Fleet, which include destroyers, amphibious warships, and littoral combat ships.
The company's wall-climbing robots crawl across difficult-to-access areas such as hulls, flight decks, and ballast tanks. They scan for corrosion and metal loss, feeding data into Gecko's AI-powered Cantilever platform. This system helps maintenance planners identify necessary repairs before ships enter major maintenance periods, potentially reducing the time vessels spend in shipyards. Loosararian noted that the primary benefit is speed, which he described as invaluable for a Navy struggling to push fleet readiness toward 80%.
As part of the expanded agreement, Gecko is unveiling a new robot called Komodo. Designed specifically for the Navy, Komodo can inspect the steel beneath thick non-skid deck coatings without requiring crews to strip away the surface material first. Traditionally, assessing the condition of steel under these coatings requires invasive removal of material to gauge the extent of damage. Komodo maps corrosion and material thickness, providing a precise picture of what needs repair. Loosararian compared the process to a CAT scan, saying it allows crews to understand exactly what is going on without disassembling parts of the ship.
Gecko claims its technology can save the Navy up to $8 million in repair costs on a single ship and identify structural issues up to 50 times faster than traditional methods. In one instance cited by Loosararian, an initial assessment required roughly 1,200 square feet of repair work. After robotic inspection, that scope was narrowed to about 300 square feet. By focusing repairs on actual damage rather than estimated areas, the technology reduces labor and material usage.
The expansion comes as China fields a larger battle force than the U.S. Navy and produces vessels at a pace American shipyards cannot easily match. This gap has increased pressure on the Pentagon to maximize the availability of ships already in service. Loosararian said the longer-term goal is to use years of inspection data to predict problems before they occur, allowing maintenance planners to have workers and materials ready when ships arrive at piers or shipyards.
The technology also aims to address labor shortages in the shipbuilding industrial base by reducing dangerous and labor-intensive manual inspections. By automating the detection of issues, the Navy can direct its limited skilled workforce toward actual repairs rather than diagnostics. For a Navy racing to maintain operational parity with China, optimizing the maintenance of existing vessels is becoming as critical as building new ones.