Gecko Robotics wins $71M Navy deal to deploy AI and robots for faster ship inspections and predictive maintenance.
The U.S. Navy has awarded Gecko Robotics a five-year contract worth up to $71 million to deploy artificial intelligence and robotics for faster ship maintenance and improved fleet readiness.The agreement, structured as an indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract, will begin with work on 18 ships in the U.
S. Pacific Fleet. The initial award is valued at up to $54 million, with access extended across all military services through a government-wide vehicle.The effort targets a long-standing bottleneck of maintenance delays in naval operations that can keep ships out of service for months. By integrating robotics and AI, Gecko aims to significantly cut inspection times and improve repair accuracy across destroyers, amphibious warships, and littoral combat ships.The contract aligns with the Navy’s goal of achieving 80 percent fleet readiness by 2027, a benchmark that depends heavily on reducing downtime and improving maintenance efficiency.Faster ship health checksGecko’s system relies on a mix of wall-climbing robots, drones, and fixed sensors that collect detailed structural data from ships, including hulls, welds, decks, and internal components. These machines operate in environments that are difficult or unsafe for human inspectors.The collected data is processed using the company’s artificial intelligence platform, which builds digital models of assets and flags both visible and hidden defects. This allows maintenance teams to identify issues earlier and prioritize repairs more effectively.According to the company, its technology can identify maintenance needs up to 50 times faster than manual inspection methods. In one case, a robotic evaluation of a flight deck eliminated more than three months of potential maintenance delays.“Readiness isn’t just a metric, it’s all that matters,” said Jake Loosararian, Co-founder and CEO of Gecko, in a press release. “This growing partnership is about unfair advantages Gecko is deploying to our Navy.”The system also enables predictive maintenance by analyzing patterns in structural wear and damage. This shifts operations away from reactive fixes toward data-driven decision-making, reducing unexpected failures.AI-driven maintenance shiftThe Navy’s adoption of robotics-based inspection reflects a broader push to modernize aging defense infrastructure using advanced technologies. By improving both speed and accuracy, these systems aim to reduce operational risk while lowering long-term maintenance costs.“Where value hasn’t improved, that’s where opportunity lives,” said Justin Fanelli, Chief Technology Officer for the Department of the Navy. “Cracking the cost equation is just as important as cracking the physics equation.”Gecko’s tools have already been used across various naval platforms, including destroyers, amphibious ships, and nuclear submarine programs. The company says its approach increases data availability while uncovering defects that traditional methods often miss.Beyond defense, Gecko applies the same robotics and AI systems across energy, manufacturing, and industrial infrastructure, where aging assets require constant monitoring and upkeep.As global naval powers race to improve fleet readiness, the use of autonomous inspection systems could become a standard approach to maintaining complex military hardware at scale.
Defense Tech Drones Military AI Predictive Maintenance Robotics Inspection Ship Maintenance U.S. Navy
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