US Navy's next toy: a VTOL-drone for non-carriers

http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/darpas-vertical-take-off-and-landing-combat-drone-could-1750154250

artist's rendering
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The DARPA and Office of Naval Research-led program seeks to give Navy surface combatants, like destroyers and Littoral Combat Ships, fixed-wing aircraft carrier-like capabilities, albeit on a smaller scale. It’s a move that could change naval warfare, and warfare in general, as we know it.

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In Phase 3, DARPA plans to build a full-scale demonstrator system of a medium-altitude, long-endurance UAS designed to use forward-deployed small ships as mobile launch and recovery sites. Initial ground-based testing, if successful, would lead to an at-sea demonstration of takeoff, transition to and from horizontal flight, and landing—all from a test platform with a deck size similar to that of a destroyer or other small surface-combat vessel.



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For the landing: I would suggest to include a camera and a small magnetic harpoon with about 10 meters of steel-rope in the "ass" of the drone. Why?

Step 1: When it tries to land vertically on the deck of a ship, a human operator can fire the harpoon (in a vertical fly-by) at the position where the drone is supposed to land.
Step 2: Another human operator will run to the rope, detach the magnet from the ship's deck and hook the rope into a winch.
Step 3: The winch will then pull the drone down and it will land exactly on top of the winch.