Navy Quadruples Robot Inspection Deal to $300 Million as Ship Readiness Race with China Intensifies

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A Contract That Grew Fourfold in Six Months

Gecko Robotics announced a five-year contract with the Navy and the General Services Administration (GSA) in March 2026. It had a ceiling of $71 million, with an initial award of $54 million. The deal covered the company's first work on 18 ships of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

According to Fox News, which reported the expansion first, the ceiling is now $300 million. A "ceiling" is the maximum the Navy may spend under the contract, not a guaranteed payment. How much will actually be ordered depends on future task orders.

Because the deal runs through the GSA, other branches of the Defense Department can also use Gecko's services under the same agreement.

What the Robots Actually Do

Gecko's wall-climbing robots crawl across hulls, decks and ballast tanks, places that are hard and sometimes dangerous for people to reach. They measure corrosion and metal loss and feed the data into an AI platform called Cantilever. The result is a digital model of each ship that planners can use to decide what needs repair.

The company claims its approach can spot some structural problems up to 50 times faster than manual inspection. It also says it can save up to $8 million in repair costs on a single ship. These figures come from Gecko and have not been independently verified.

Komodo: A "CAT Scan" for Warship Decks

With the expansion, Gecko is presenting a new robot built for the Navy called Komodo. Warship decks are covered with a rough non-skid coating that keeps crews and aircraft from slipping. Until now, checking the steel underneath often meant stripping the coating first.

Komodo scans through the coating and maps corrosion and steel thickness without removing it. Gecko's CEO, Jake Loosararian, compares it to a medical CAT scan. He cites one case in which a planned repair of about 1,200 square feet shrank to about 300 square feet once robots showed where the damage really was.

According to Seapower magazine, Komodo can work in different sea conditions. A ship's deck can therefore be assessed at sea six to twelve months before it enters a maintenance period. That gives yards time to plan the work.

Why Speed Matters

The Navy has set a goal of 80 percent fleet readiness by 2027. It is far from there. Defense One reported that only 41 percent of ships finished repairs on time in 2025, against a target of 71 percent. Loosararian puts the cost of the maintenance backlog at $13 billion to $20 billion a year, and says roughly 40 percent of the fleet is unavailable at any given time. Those are his estimates, not official Navy figures.

Delays often arise when crews open up a ship and find more damage than expected. Finding problems earlier means shorter stays in the shipyard. The technology could also reduce hazardous inspection work at a time when shipyards face a shortage of skilled labor.

The China Factor

The Pentagon says China's navy is the largest in the world, with a battle force of more than 370 ships. It projects growth to 435 ships by 2030. Congressional researchers note that U.S. military officials are concerned about how quickly China builds warships and how its shipbuilding capacity compares with America's.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) directs this buildup as part of a long-term military expansion. The U.S. cannot easily match that production pace in the short term. Loosararian's argument is that if America cannot out-build China, it can at least keep more of its existing ships ready for action.

Outlook: From Finding Damage to Predicting It

Gecko wants to go further than detecting damage. As inspection data builds up over the years, the company says its software could predict failures before they happen. Workers and materials could then be ready when a ship arrives at the pier.

Whether that promise holds up will become clear over the coming years. For now, the larger ceiling shows that the Navy is willing to bet heavily on robotics and AI to close its readiness gap.

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Sources

1. Fox News – "Navy robot deal quadruples as US looks to 'outsmart' China with AI at sea": https://www.foxnews.com/politics/navy-robot-deal-quadruples-us-looks-outsmart-china-ai-sea
2. Breaking Defense – "Navy taps Gecko Robotics for ship-scaling robots to identify repairs in Pacific Fleet": https://breakingdefense.com/2026/03/navy-taps-gecko-robotics-for-ship-scaling-robots-to-identify-repairs-in-pacific-fleet/
3. The Next Web – "Gecko Robotics lands $71M Navy deal to send wall-climbing robots inside warships": https://thenextweb.com/news/gecko-robotics-navy-contract-ship-digital-twins
4. Seapower Magazine – "Gecko Robotics' Komodo Robot Aids Ship Flight Deck Maintenance": https://seapowermagazine.org/gecko-robotics-komodo-robot-aids-ship-flight-deck-maintenance/
5. Congressional Research Service report on China's naval modernization (O'Rourke), hosted by Andrew Erickson: https://www.andrewerickson.com/2025/05/new-285th-iteration-ron-orourkes-latest-crs-report-china-naval-modernization-implications-for-u-s-navy-capabilities/
6. Gecko Robotics press release (GlobeNewswire, March 17, 2026): https://finance.yahoo.com/news/gecko-robotics-announces-71m-deal-100000935.html

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