China–U.S. Naval Competition

The U.S. Navy has awarded a five‑year, $71 million contract vehicle to Pittsburgh‑based Gecko Robotics to deploy swarms of wall‑climbing, AI‑enabled inspection robots on warships, starting with 18 vessels in the Pacific Fleet. The systems scale hulls, flight decks and other hard‑to‑reach steel surfaces to scan for corrosion, metal fatigue and weld defects, feeding millions of data points into a digital platform designed to flag problems earlier and reduce time in drydock. Navy and industry sources say only about 60% of U.S. ships are currently operational as maintenance backlogs and a shortage of skilled shipyard workers sideline a large share of the fleet, even as China fields an estimated 370–390 warships and submarines and vastly outbuilds the U.S. in overall tonnage. The initial work will focus on destroyers, amphibious warships and littoral combat ships that are central to Indo‑Pacific operations, and the contract mechanism allows other U.S. military services to buy into the technology. Naval leadership has set a target of 80% fleet readiness by 2027, and this push into AI‑driven maintenance reflects growing concern in Washington that U.S. industrial and repair capacity is falling behind China’s rapidly expanding, state‑backed shipbuilding sector.