Just six months after initially tapping the technology to help get ships through maintenance and back to sea faster, the expanded agreement with Pittsburgh-based Gecko Robotics underscores the importance the U.S. military is putting on tech-based solutions. The initial ceiling for the deal was $71 million, but the Navy is pushing to improve fleet readiness amid a widening shipbuilding gap with China.<\/p>\n
“While the U.S. may not be able to out-manufacture faster than China, we can outsmart the ways that we maintain, operate and are ready with our vessels,” Gecko Robotics CEO Jake Loosararian told Fox News Digital.<\/p>\n
Gecko says its technology can save the Navy up to $8 million in repair costs on a single ship and identify some structural issues up to 50 times faster than traditional inspection methods.<\/p>\n
INSIDE TRUMP\u2019S DEAL TO GIVE AMERICAN TAXPAYERS A MASSIVE STAKE IN NEW $6.6B SUBMARINE DEAL<\/a><\/p>\n Gecko Robotics uses robotic inspections and AI-powered software to map structural conditions aboard U.S. Navy warships, helping maintenance crews identify areas that may need repair. (Gecko Robotics)<\/p>\n The company is also unveiling a new robot developed specifically for the Navy that can inspect the steel beneath thick coatings on warship decks without first stripping them away.<\/p>\n Dubbed Komodo, the robot scans a ship’s deck to map corrosion and material thickness, giving maintenance crews a picture of what needs to be repaired before more invasive work begins.<\/p>\n “It’s essentially a CAT scan,” Loosararian said. “You’re basically understanding exactly what’s going on.”<\/p>\n Traditionally, determining the condition of steel beneath a ship’s non-skid deck coating can require removing material before crews know the extent of the problem. Komodo is designed to gather that information without first taking the surface apart.<\/p>\n “The robots are able to actually understand what’s wrong without having to take apart the ship to figure out what to fix,” Loosararian said.<\/p>\n In another example cited by Loosararian, an assessment that initially called for roughly 1,200 square feet of repair work was narrowed to about 300 square feet after robotic inspections provided a more precise picture of the damage.<\/p>\n “You reduce and focus the kinds of repairs that you need,” Loosararian said. “You’re repairing less.”<\/p>\n A Gecko Robotics wall-climbing robot scans the surface of a U.S. Navy warship, collecting data on material condition that can be analyzed for corrosion and structural damage. (Gecko Robotics)<\/p>\n CHINA\u2019S LONG-TERM FINANCES ARE ALL WET AS BILL TO MAINTAIN HUGE NAVY COMES DUE IN 2031<\/a><\/p>\n The increased ceiling comes just six months after the Navy awarded Gecko a five-year, $71 million contract vehicle to expand the use of its robotic inspection technology across the fleet.<\/p>\n Under the initial agreement announced in March, Gecko was set to begin work on 18 ships in the U.S. Pacific Fleet, including destroyers, amphibious warships and littoral combat ships.<\/p>\n The company’s wall-climbing robots crawl across hulls, flight decks, ballast tanks and other difficult-to-access areas, scanning for corrosion, metal loss and other structural problems. The data is fed into Gecko’s AI-powered Cantilever platform to help maintenance planners determine where repairs are needed.<\/p>\n The goal is to find those problems earlier, before a ship enters a major maintenance period and crews discover additional work that can extend its stay in the shipyard.<\/p>\n “The biggest savings are just in speed,” Loosararian said. “Speed \u2014 you can’t put a price tag on it, especially if you’re in the U.S. Navy right now.”<\/p>\n The expansion comes as Navy leaders seek to push fleet readiness toward 80% while maintenance delays continue to sideline ships that would otherwise be available for deployment.<\/p>\n China already fields a larger battle force than the U.S. Navy and can produce vessels at a pace American shipyards<\/a> cannot easily match. That has put additional pressure on the Pentagon to keep more of the ships already in the American fleet available for operations.<\/p>\n The inspections will focus on destroyers, amphibious warships and littoral combat ships \u2014 vessels that form a core part of U.S. naval operations in the Indo-Pacific. (Gecko Robotics)<\/p>\n For Gecko, the longer-term goal is to move beyond finding existing damage and use years of inspection data to anticipate problems before they force ships into longer repair periods.<\/p>\n “You are able to predict exactly what’s going to break before it does,” Loosararian said, allowing maintenance planners to have workers, materials and repair plans ready when a ship reaches the pier or enters a shipyard.<\/p>\n The technology could also reduce the amount of dangerous and labor-intensive inspection work performed by shipyard workers<\/a> as the industrial base struggles with shortages of skilled labor.<\/p>\n![\"Gecko](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/gecko-1.png\")
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