At present, any vehicle that is destroyed is completely lost.

I was thinking that the use of a tool specific to mules or pelicans, a salvage crane or something like that, could be used to "capture" the wrecked vehicle. The vehicle that captures it could then return to the carrier, offloading the wrecked vehicle in critical condition.

Rather than being able to simply auto repair it however, such critical damage would require manual repair by the players, encouraging a risk reward scenario where players can recover losses sustained during hard island engagements, but must expend time and operational functionality to do so.