The US Navy has tapped Gecko Robotics\u00a0for a five-year Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract to employ the Pennsylvania-based company\u2019s hull-scaling robots and artificial intelligence to detect potential repairs for vessels like destroyers.<\/p>\n
Initially, Gecko will begin working on\u00a018 ships in the US Pacific Fleet\u00a0over the next nine months as part of the contract,\u00a0with its robots inspecting destroyers, amphibious warships and littoral combat ships, the company\u2019s CEO Jake Loosararian told Breaking Defense.\u00a0The contract has a ceiling of up to $71 million over the five years.<\/p>\n
The effort is in lockstep with the Navy\u2019s broader initiative to improve combat surge readiness across the fleet to roughly 80 percent by 2027, according to Gecko. As of April 2025, Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jim Kilby said that\u00a0readiness for surface ships\u00a0was at approximately 68 percent.<\/p>\n
Delays in maintenance and modernization availability are key factors contributing to the service missing that goal,\u00a0but Gecko says\u00a0that its technology detects repairs up to 50 times faster than traditional efforts.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a first example of the Navy trying to build a living, breathing, digital record and an understanding of the health of the most critical assets they have in pursuit, of course, of getting to 80 percent readiness,\u201d Loosararian said. \u201cThis is one of the most important ways that they\u2019re trying to approach getting to that goal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gecko\u2019s robotic systems gather a host of information about the condition of the ships\u2019 hulls, decks, and welds without destroying any of the materials that are on some of these vessels, according to Loosararian, and collect significantly more data points more quickly than the traditional model employing shipyard workers to conduct these inspections. Shipyard workers\u00a0can\u00a0then use Gecko\u2019s software to establish models and pinpoint areas that may need repairs, based on the data collected.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt saves incredible amounts of time, incredible amounts of money. That\u2019s one of the largest ways that the Navy is able to begin to take an analog process and make it digital and predictable,\u201d Loosararian said. \u201cBut you need robots to be able to digitize the physical world, and then the software helps to take actions back into the real world.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Navy has previously used Gecko robots and systems to complete work on surface ships, including destroyers and amphibious vessels, as well as aircraft carriers, according to the company. However, this is the largest contract the Navy has awarded Gecko thus far.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The US Navy has tapped Gecko Robotics\u00a0for a five-year Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract to employ the Pennsylvania-based company\u2019s hull-scaling robots and artificial intelligence to detect potential repairs for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3015,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[522,71],"class_list":["post-2504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-naval","tag-gecko","tag-us-navy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/US-NAVY-GECKO.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2504"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3016,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2504\/revisions\/3016"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}