FIRST ON FOX: The U.S. Navy is quadrupling the ceiling on a contract for AI-powered robots used to inspect warships to $300 million.

Just six months after initially tapping the technology to help get ships through maintenance and back to sea faster, the expanded agreement with Pittsburgh-based Gecko Robotics underscores the importance the U.S. military is putting on tech-based solutions. The initial ceiling for the deal was $71 million, but the Navy is pushing to improve fleet readiness amid a widening shipbuilding gap with China.

"While the U.S. may not be able to out-manufacture faster than China, we can outsmart the ways that we maintain, operate and are ready with our vessels," Gecko Robotics CEO Jake Loosararian told Fox News Digital.

Gecko says its technology can save the Navy up to $8 million in repair costs on a single ship and identify some structural issues up to 50 times faster than traditional inspection methods.

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The company is also unveiling a new robot developed specifically for the Navy that can inspect the steel beneath thick coatings on warship decks without first stripping them away.

Dubbed Komodo, the robot scans a ship's deck to map corrosion and material thickness, giving maintenance crews a picture of what needs to be repaired before more invasive work begins.

"It's essentially a CAT scan," Loosararian said. "You're basically understanding exactly what's going on."

Traditionally, determining the condition of steel beneath a ship's non-skid deck coating can require removing material before crews know the extent of the problem. Komodo is designed to gather that information without first taking the surface apart.

"The robots are able to actually understand what's wrong without having to take apart the ship to figure out what to fix," Loosararian said.

In another example cited by Loosararian, an assessment that initially called for roughly 1,200 square feet of repair work was narrowed to about 300 square feet after robotic inspections provided a more precise picture of the damage.

"You reduce and focus the kinds of repairs that you need," Loosararian said. "You're repairing less."

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The increased ceiling comes just six months after the Navy awarded Gecko a five-year, $71 million contract vehicle to expand the use of its robotic inspection technology across the fleet.

Under the initial agreement announced in March, Gecko was set to begin work on 18 ships in the U.S. Pacific Fleet, including destroyers, amphibious warships and littoral combat ships.

The company's wall-climbing robots crawl across hulls, flight decks, ballast tanks and other difficult-to-access areas, scanning for corrosion, metal loss and other structural problems. The data is fed into Gecko's AI-powered Cantilever platform to help maintenance planners determine where repairs are needed.

The goal is to find those problems earlier, before a ship enters a major maintenance period and crews discover additional work that can extend its stay in the shipyard.

"The biggest savings are just in speed," Loosararian said. "Speed — you can't put a price tag on it, especially if you're in the U.S. Navy right now."

The expansion comes as Navy leaders seek to push fleet readiness toward 80% while maintenance delays continue to sideline ships that would otherwise be available for deployment.

China already fields a larger battle force than the U.S. Navy and can produce vessels at a pace American shipyards cannot easily match. That has put additional pressure on the Pentagon to keep more of the ships already in the American fleet available for operations.

For Gecko, the longer-term goal is to move beyond finding existing damage and use years of inspection data to anticipate problems before they force ships into longer repair periods.

"You are able to predict exactly what's going to break before it does," Loosararian said, allowing maintenance planners to have workers, materials and repair plans ready when a ship reaches the pier or enters a shipyard.

The technology could also reduce the amount of dangerous and labor-intensive inspection work performed by shipyard workers as the industrial base struggles with shortages of skilled labor.

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Loosararian said the combination of robotics and AI is ultimately aimed at allowing a limited workforce to spend more time fixing ships and less time determining what needs to be fixed.

For a Navy racing to keep pace with a rapidly expanding Chinese fleet, he argued, getting more out of the ships already in the water could prove just as important as building new ones.

"While the U.S. may not be able to out-manufacture faster than China," Loosararian said, "we can outsmart the ways that we maintain, operate and are ready with our vessels."

America seems to be on the precipice of a future technological golden age. Whether we take steps toward that future could depend on which political vision prevails over the next few election cycles.

Speaking alongside President Donald Trump at the White House in September, Elon Musk predicted a world where artificial intelligence and advanced robotics create an "age of abundance." Musk suggests these technologies could eventually provide your average person with better medical care than what today’s wealthiest individuals enjoy.

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This optimistic vision aligns well with Trump’s repeated promises of a new American golden age. Yet, as his administration works to accelerate technological advancement, an increasingly influential wing on the far left appears determined to slam on the brakes.

Trump’s vision of a golden age

The Trump administration has made American leadership in artificial intelligence a cornerstone of its economic agenda. Through its AI Action Plan and executive orders, the administration has prioritized eliminating regulatory barriers, constructing data centers and expanding energy infrastructure necessary to power the AI revolution.

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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has argued that AI and automation could help create a new era of American manufacturing. In an interview from 2025, Bessent suggested that the advanced "smart factories" of tomorrow could overcome labor-cost issues, making manufacturing in the United States far more economically feasible.

Imagine a future in America where advanced robotics makes domestic manufacturing globally competitive, where AI leads to major medical breakthroughs and where technological innovation produces unprecedented economic prosperity.

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Of course, there are legitimate questions about how this societal transformation will unfold, but the potential benefits are incredible.

The far left wants to hit the brakes

While many in the Trump administration plan for a golden age, Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders and his fellow democratic socialists are promoting an entirely different future.

In March, Sanders and New York Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proposed a nationwide moratorium on new data center construction until Congress establishes a sufficient regulatory system for the industry.

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These positions have quickly become commonplace for Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) activists and candidates. Many of these DSA-endorsed candidates support data center moratoriums and push these sorts of proposals at the state and local level.

But Sanders’ anti-AI sentiment goes way further. His American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act would effectively nationalize 50% of the AI industry, converting those stakes into a government-controlled fund. The plan would also include stacking the boards of these companies with federally picked appointees to influence corporate decisions.

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More recently, Sanders introduced legislation that would permanently prohibit the development of artificial superintelligence. This plan would establish a new federal AI agency and halt other advanced AI development until regulators approve continued efforts. Under this proposal, individuals who violate the research bans could face up to 20 years in federal prison.

Think about that. At a time when America is competing with China for technological supremacy, one of the country’s most prominent socialist politicians wants federal bureaucrats to target AI scientists with potential prison time for developing AI research it deems too advanced.

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The cost of standing still

To be sure, the AI revolution comes with many legitimate concerns that deserve conversation. Potential job displacement, privacy violations, algorithmic manipulation and the possible misuse of advanced AI are issues that will likely need to be addressed.

However, the consequences of deliberately suppressing technological innovation are rarely given equal attention.

Consider the potential benefits of AI-assisted drug discovery, which could lead to better treatments for cancer, Alzheimer’s and many other conditions. AI-enhanced robotics and logistics could transform manufacturing, increase agricultural output and help elderly and disabled Americans maintain their independence.

Imagine the lives and the industries that could be saved and the economic opportunities that could spring up from these technologies that we have only now begun to understand.

Under the far left’s proposals, we may never see these benefits materialize. Sanders says he is concerned that average Americans will be left behind in the AI revolution, but his proposed restrictions threaten to undermine the very innovations that could cause growth in societal prosperity.

China won’t be hitting the brakes

Perhaps the most concerning consequence of the far left’s vision is America’s geopolitical future.

Like America, China is also pursuing AI at breakneck speeds. While America has enjoyed a substantial lead in this race, the recent Stanford University 2026 AI Index showed the performance gap between American and Chinese models has effectively disappeared.

The proposals from Sanders and the far left to stall AI research and data center construction give the Chinese Communist Party opportunity to pull ahead in the AI race. If China were to take the lead in the AI race, America’s global status economically and geopolitically could be severely diminished.

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At the same White House meeting where Musk outlined his optimistic vision of the future, Trump warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping "will take every data center that we don’t want."

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The AI revolution carries great potential for increased prosperity unlike anything we have seen in our lifetime. It would be a historic tragedy if America surrendered that opportunity because our politicians were more afraid of technological progress than our geopolitical rivals.