"We all thought it was an engineering impossibility until it wasn't."
-Linda Weiss, co-chief engineer

Designed by Linda Weiss and Mark Ricks to allow even the shortest of airstrips to operate advanced fighter aircraft, the Renegade VTOL Fighter is an adaptation of the Renegade Fighter. Combining its advanced stealth abilities and weapons load with VTOL capabilities made it a powerful asset. However, the Air Force saw no need for the aircraft, but the Pilotmario Navy took great interest in the aircraft. At this point they were still using Hawks for their carriers. While a good airplane, the Hawk was clearly an obsolete type, and the Dart was too big to use effectively. Deck trials were successful, and was adopted. The adoption of this plane influenced the decision to procure a larger fleet of smaller aircraft carriers than a small fleet of large supercarriers, since the Renegade VTOL could operate from the smaller carriers, and it was decided that a larger fleet of smaller carriers were more flexible. These aircraft saw service during the Third Olympian War, alongside its more conventional counterpart. Like its conventional Renegade Fighter counterpart, it also earned the name "Silent Thanatos", due to its stealth and firepower, as well as "Copperhead" due to its visual similarity with a starfighter from a popular science-fiction movie. Olympian forces were never aware of the presence of this aircraft, as they were assumed to be normal Renegade Fighters.