ALEXANDRIA, Va., Aug. 20 -- United States Patent no. 12,391,413, issued on Aug. 19, was assigned to General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. (San Diego).

"Systems and methods for airborne recovery and launch of aerial vehicles" was invented by Michael Joseph Allwein (San Luis Obispo, Calif.), Roy Hultenius (Encinitas, Calif.), James William Groves (La Mesa, Calif.), Arthur Siemens (San Diego), Sebastian Kaser (San Diego), Elijah Abelovski (Escondido, Calif.) and Celestino Morales (San Diego).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Embodiments of a recovery and deployment pylon for recovering and launching/relaunching a target aircraft that can include a housing configured to be coupled with an aircraf...