The U.S. Navy and GSA have awarded Pittsburgh-based Gecko Robotics a five-year IDIQ contract with a $71 million ceiling to deploy artificial intelligence and robotics for military ship inspection and maintenance. The initial award is valued at up to $54 million, with all military services able to access the contract through a government-wide vehicle.

Work begins with 18 ships in the U.S. Pacific Fleet, covering destroyers, amphibious warships, and littoral combat ships. The contract supports the Chief of Naval Operations' target of 80% fleet readiness by 2027 — a benchmark the Navy has struggled to meet due to chronic maintenance backlogs.

Robots That Climb, Fly, and Swim

Gecko's system uses a mix of wall-climbing robots, drones, and fixed sensors to collect structural data from hulls, welds, decks, and internal components — often in environments too dangerous or tight for human inspectors. An onboard AI platform builds digital models of each asset and flags both visible and hidden defects.

The result: inspections that are up to 50 times faster than manual methods. In one documented case, a single robotic evaluation of a flight deck eliminated over three months of potential maintenance delays.

"Readiness isn't just a metric, it's all that matters," said CEO Jake Loosararian. "This growing partnership is about unfair advantages Gecko is deploying to our Navy."

The company, which was valued at $1.25 billion in a June 2025 funding round, has previously worked across Navy destroyers, amphibious ships, and both Virginia and Columbia-class nuclear submarine programs. The new contract represents a significant expansion of that footprint.