The U.S. Navy has raised the ceiling on its AI robot ship inspection contract with Gecko Robotics from $71 million to $300 million, the Pittsburgh company announced on Oct. 20. The five-year agreement lets the Navy place orders up to that amount; it does not commit the service to spending it.
The modification, dated Sept. 16, obligated no additional funds, according to federal procurement records compiled by GovTribe. The database lists about $3.43 million obligated under an existing order. The contract ceiling quadrupled roughly six months after the initial agreement, a pace Navy Times described as unusually fast for naval procurement.
What the robots do
Gecko's machines crawl across decks and climb steel structures, using sensors to measure metal thickness and detect corrosion. Measurements feed into AI software that helps engineers map damage and plan repairs. One system, Komodo, reads steel through thick nonskid deck coatings without stripping the protective layer.
The original agreement covered 18 Pacific Fleet ships: destroyers, amphibious warships, and littoral combat ships. The expanded ceiling leaves room for additional vessels and locations depending on Navy requirements, according to Steve Bourner, Gecko's head of public relations and communications, who spoke with www.theepochtimes.com on Oct. 21.
Measured results from the field
Rear Adm. Dianna Wolfson, director of fleet maintenance for U.S. Fleet Forces Command, described the system's output on the Virginia Ship Repair Association's Ship Repair Radio podcast in August. Robots collected 128,000 thickness measurements on the destroyer USS Stout, producing a color-coded map of the steel's condition.
That map cut the anticipated repair scope from more than 1,200 feet of steel to slightly more than 300 feet. Bourner said the inspection saved weeks of maintenance time and thousands of labor hours.
He offered a sharper comparison. Two unidentified Arleigh Burke-class destroyers entered maintenance around the same time with similar structural problems. On one, engineers collected about 3,000 measurements through conventional inspection, then approved a $7.9 million flight-deck replacement that extended maintenance by several months. On the other, Gecko's robots collected more than 8 million measurements, and Navy engineers used the company's software to define a repair scope estimated at $427,000. That ship finished on schedule.
A data density gap of roughly 2,700 to one produced a cost gap of about 18 to one. The inference is structural: better measurement compresses repair scope, and compressed repair scope compresses downtime.
Why the Navy is scaling this now
Wolfson said about 14 surface ships were in major maintenance during her August interview, with more than half behind schedule or expected to slip. Unexpected work discovered once ships are in the yard is a primary delay driver, especially when replacement parts were never ordered.
She argued for shorter, more frequent maintenance windows with work defined in advance, a model that only functions when inspection data exists before the ship enters the yard.
“The main way we're going to win the war on maintenance is shorter, more frequent availabilities,” Wolfson said.
“It's really important that we get them out on time,” she added, referring to ships in maintenance.
A January 2025 Government Accountability Office report found longstanding problems with spare parts shortages, insufficient qualified maintenance personnel, and repeatedly postponed repairs. As of September 2024, 46 recommendations from earlier surface ship maintenance reviews remained unimplemented, though the Navy had made progress on 12.
Bourner said the technology helps engineers determine damage extent and prioritize repairs, while Navy personnel retain authority over maintenance decisions. The division of labor is clean: the algorithm proposes, humans dispose.
Readiness as protocol
The Navy's 2024 Navigation Plan set readiness for possible conflict with the People's Republic of China by 2027 as a major strategic objective, with a target of 80 percent of ships, submarines, and aircraft ready for rapid deployment. As Marine Insight reported, the expanded robotics agreement fits directly into that push to counter emerging naval threats.
Gecko CEO Jake Loosararian framed the scaling in blunt terms for The Hill, as carried by Yahoo News: “When something works, it scales fast.”
Gecko has separately supported aircraft carrier and submarine programs, though those assignments fall outside the expanded agreement.
The pattern here extends beyond one vendor. A maintenance regime that runs on continuous machine inspection converts readiness from an annual event into a standing data process. The ships become legible to their maintainers before the yard opens. For a fleet measured against a 2027 clock, that conversion is the point.