Dynetics has a UAV designed to be launched from and recovered in flight by larger aircraft. The UAV looks like a cruise missile, but is meant to carry a variety of recoverable payloads such as recon, communications and targeting systems. The video below kinda buries the lede: it starts off with several minutes of “meh” computer graphics, and *then* goes to video showing that important portions of the actual systems have been built and flight tested. They don’t seem to have gone as far as in-flight recovery of powered vehicles as yet.
The recovery rate planned for 2019 seems kinda slow: 4 in-flight recoveries in 30 minutes. *Eventually* I bet AI will get good enough that the recovery system will be reduced to approximately nothing, just a net *inside* the cargo bay. The Advanced Gremlin will just fly itself right into the rear door of the C-130 and shut its engine down, perfectly timed so that it is gently snagged in a net, and then a roboarm will swiftly reach out, grab the vehicle and put it in a rack. One recovery every few seconds. A *really* advanced system would have the Uber gremlins fly themselves straight into a rack, no roboarm needed.
