Why not recover the sUAs with a big UAV? You can do all sorts of crazy things re: vehicle design, if you don't need people inside.

For example, have each sUA just dive toward the UAV from above, decelerate to a zero/zero intercept, and cut propulsion, such that it goes ballistic falling past the loading bay; and then have the UAV target the sUA with a net out of its loading bay, catch it, and reel it in. Like a skyhook that assumes an uncooperative peer.

Or, have the sUAs throw themselves at random points on the the UAV's (very thick and solid and ferromagnetic) hull, and lock onto it magnetically, and then have the UAV pluck the sUAs off with external cranes and bring the sUAs into the loading bay. Like a monkey plucking ticks off of itself and eating them.

Fly straight up, cut engines, fall ballistic. Maybe even add a parachute. The US recovered spy satellite footage in the 60s this way, with payload falling from space and being caught in-flight. So it should be workable today as well.

Is it though? I mean, it ostensibly is, at least on paper. Not so much in practice, though.

Maybe there is a cycle of expansion and contraction? In the 50s-80s we've pushed tech across all domains as far as we could, doing miracles. Then it got all scaled back in an attempt to optimize the most common use cases to be cheaper. If so, I can't wait for the next expansion phase.

Why can't you? Wouldn't it just be, essentially, a reusable Tomahawk cruise missile?

Could the TLAM components be used in a better folding airframe? I guess so. It always seemed dumb to blow up a $2m airframe to delivery 450kg of HE. And of course it is, TLAM would be cheaper if it wasn't engineered for delivering nuclear warheads. Maybe just build $200k Tomahawk-lite that don't need air recovery, just ditch in the sea.

One of my favorite parasite fighters https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_XF-85_Goblin