Lead with the design choice that flips the usual assumption: for most launch hardware, the ocean is where things go to be lost or destroyed. ULA's grant treats a water landing as a planned recovery method, with the hardware engineered to preserve itself through the splashdown and the corrosive marine environment that follows.
The grant US11305895B1 (inventors Brendan M. Coyne, James Lampariello, and Daniel A. Wehrwein), classified in B64G 1/002 (launch and reentry) with B64G 1/62 (descent and landing), claims a self-preserved amphibious landing. Self-preserved is the operative phrase, the hardware is designed not just to land in water but to come back from it intact enough to reuse.
The economic logic is recovery cost. Propulsive landing on a pad or a drone ship is one route to reusing hardware; a robust amphibious approach is another, potentially simpler for certain components, where you accept a water landing and engineer around its hazards rather than expending propellant to avoid it. Different operators, different bets on how to get the hardware back.
It belongs to the broader reusability conversation of the era, where Blue Origin was patenting the seals for steerable, fly-back engines and ULA was working integrated-vehicle-fluids concepts (US11846248B1) to extend hardware life. The whole sector was hunting for the cheapest credible path to not throwing the vehicle away.
As with any recovery-architecture patent, the document defines the approach, not its yield. It does not tell you how many components survived in reusable condition or what the refurbishment cost. It tells you ULA considered engineered amphibious recovery worth protecting, a data point on how a traditional prime was thinking about reuse.