Gecko Robotics has won a U.S. Navy deal worth up to $71 million to use its wall-climbing and flying robots to inspect ships, according to Reuters and Bloomberg. The award, reported as being routed through the General Services Administration, expands earlier Navy work that began on destroyers and amphibious assault ships and is now scaling across the fleet. The deal reflects the Navy’s push to find faster ways to keep ships ready for deployment.
From $5 million pilot to $71 million contract
The latest contract is valued at up to $71 million for ship inspections, according to a report on a deal awarded by the U.S. Navy and the General Services Administration to Gecko Robotics. The agreement focuses on using the company’s robots to collect structural data on Navy vessels so engineers can spot corrosion and other defects earlier in the maintenance cycle. By tying the ceiling value to performance over time rather than a single project, the Navy and GSA have set up a framework that can expand as the technology proves itself on more hulls.
This larger award builds on a smaller $5 million ceiling contract that Gecko announced as an expansion of its Navy work. The company said it had secured a $5 million ceiling agreement involving Huntington Ingalls Industries to support surface ship maintenance inspections, with a focus on amphibious assault ships and related work, according to a company announcement. That earlier deal gave shipyards and the Navy a way to test the robots on specific classes of ships before committing to a broader rollout.
How Gecko’s robots inspect Navy ships
The new contract centers on Gecko’s wall-climbing robots, which are designed to move across vertical steel surfaces on ship hulls and internal structures. These machines can climb the outer hull and other large metal areas while collecting structural and material data, according to an institutional report describing how Gecko’s robots climb hulls. By carrying sensors across the metal, they generate detailed readings that can show thinning steel, cracks or other signs of wear that might not be visible to the naked eye.
The same reporting explains that Gecko’s systems also crawl through ballast tanks and fly through confined spaces inside ships, again collecting structural and material data in areas that are hazardous or time-consuming for human inspectors to enter. That combination of climbing, crawling and flying robots means a single technology stack can reach the hull exterior, internal tanks and tight compartments, which together represent some of the most inspection-intensive parts of a warship. For sailors and shipyard workers, the approach is intended to reduce the need for scaffolding, confined-space entries and other high-risk tasks while still providing detailed information on the condition of the steel.
Early deployments on amphibious ships and destroyers
Before the $71 million award, Gecko had already begun working with the Navy on individual ships. In a March 2023 announcement, the company said it was expanding its work with the service to include its first amphibious assault ship along with an additional destroyer, according to a distributed press release. That release described how the robots were used for surface ship maintenance inspections, giving engineers a new set of data to plan repairs and upgrades.
The same March 2023 communication referenced amphibious assault ships as a key focus for the technology, highlighting the complexity and size of those vessels. Amphibious assault ships carry aircraft, landing craft and Marines, which means any delay in their maintenance can ripple through deployment schedules. By starting on an amphibious assault ship and a destroyer, Gecko and the Navy were effectively testing the robots on two of the fleet’s most operationally important ship types before scaling up.
Goal: shorter maintenance cycles and higher readiness
Gecko’s July 2023 announcement framed the $5 million ceiling contract with Huntington Ingalls Industries as a way to speed up maintenance cycles for Navy surface ships. The company said the agreement was intended to help the Navy complete inspections more quickly and with more data, according to the same company announcement. Faster and more detailed inspections can help shipyards identify which steel needs replacement and which sections can remain in service, which in turn affects how long a ship stays in dry dock.
The March 2023 expansion release also included an internal performance claim that Gecko’s robots capture more inspection data than traditional methods. That claim, presented in the company’s own materials, suggests that the robots do not simply replace existing inspection labor but change the data set that planners use to schedule repairs, according to the distributed press release. If that performance holds up under wider use, it could let the Navy shift from reactive repairs to more predictive maintenance on hull structures, which would be a significant change in how ship condition is managed.
Pacific Fleet plans and operational impact
The operational stakes are clearest in the Pacific, where the U.S. Navy has a heavy concentration of ships and rising maintenance demands. Reporting on the fleet’s plans states that the U.S. Pacific Fleet intends to deploy wall-climbing and flying robots on ships, adding more units over the course of the year, according to an institutional account of how the Pacific Fleet will deploy robots. That rollout indicates that the technology is being treated not as a one-off experiment but as a tool that can be embedded in regular maintenance cycles across a major fleet command.
For operational commanders, the main benefit is time. The Bloomberg report on the $71 million award notes that the contract is intended to help reduce maintenance delays, which can keep ships tied up in yards instead of available for tasking, according to the description of how the contract is worth up to $71 m. If inspections can be completed faster and with clearer data on where repairs are needed, planners can sequence work more efficiently and return ships to sea sooner, which directly affects how many hulls are available for patrols, exercises and potential crises.
What the deal signals for defense tech
The progression from a $5 million ceiling contract with Huntington Ingalls Industries to a $71 million agreement with the Navy and GSA shows how quickly a niche industrial technology can move into the defense mainstream when it solves a specific operational problem. The initial work on a single amphibious assault ship and an additional destroyer, as described in the March 2023 expansion release, provided a proof of concept that the robots could handle complex Navy environments, according to the Gecko expansion announcement. The subsequent Pacific Fleet deployment plans and the higher-value contract suggest the technology is moving beyond early trials and into broader operational use.
At the same time, the reliance on company claims for some performance metrics, such as data capture compared with traditional inspections, points to an information gap. Independent assessments of how much faster or more accurate these robotic inspections are have not been detailed in the available sources. For now, the Navy’s decision to commit up to $71 million and to integrate the technology into Pacific Fleet operations serves as the clearest public signal of confidence in the approach, even as outside verification of specific performance claims remains limited.
For defense contractors and technology firms, the Gecko deal illustrates a path in which targeted automation of maintenance tasks can attract significant federal spending when tied directly to readiness outcomes. For sailors and shipyard workers, it points toward a future in which more of the hazardous inspection work is handled by machines that climb hulls, crawl through ballast tanks and fly into confined spaces, while humans focus on planning and executing the repairs that keep ships in the fight.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
