This does seem like piracy at some levels. Granted it was done with a pen not firearms. I would think the U.N. would have some issues with this.

I remember that one. We laughed at 'em 'cause it's really obvious that the aircraft did a belly landing and scraped off its camera payload (which they're kinda designed to do - by and large, the payloads are the only pieces worth anything on the aircraft)... and at the CIA 'cause they lost it to Iran.
Never understood why it didn't get an airstrike. That's SOP for when an aircraft goes down and we can't recover it. I mean, it can't be like they were worried about violating Iranian airspace again.

I wonder if it was really hacked and taken though? That seems like worse news than them having it.

Breaking a camera from 10,000 feet isn't exactly difficult. wouldn't suprise me if there isn't some procedure to auto drop teh camera from a really great distance if it looks like the craft is going down...

They didn't have to hack it, they spoofed the GPS, through a relatively known vulnerability.

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2012/06/...searchers-say/

The article above is from June, but the idea has been around a good deal longer than that.

edit: A better link, specifically regarding the drone hijacking.

Thanks for the examples. But I was actually referring to ships and military property seized because of unpaid debts.
Thanks for the suggestions also, they aren't half bad.

I know, but those are about as close of an example as you're going to get. Most countries either pay their debts or don't spend money on ships that visit other countries so the sample size is low.

@ silveroak: That'd just be added weight on an aircraft frame that's really, really tight. The payloads are generally worth much, much more than the airframe - so in cases where you can't afford to have it survive, you just aim the bird for something hard.

I really doubt that it was as the Iranians say (please note that Iranian stories changed - first they claim GPS spoofing, then they claim some massive infiltration of the CIA). Shadows fly by GPS (we're lazy), but the bigger birds go with the INS specifically for this reason.
Honestly, what's most likely is that the bird suffered a malfunction ("Ran out of fuel", "AV engine fail" or "AV generator failure" are all big favorites of mine) during loss-of-link and had a relatively soft crash. That sort of thing isn't at all rare with UAVs.

I thought the protocols for UAVs that lost link and couldn't re-establish within a particular time-frame were to destroy all sensitive material. I guess a deliberately hard landing would fit that one.
But back to the Argentinian ship - has anyone considered that the reason the Argentinians aren't making any serious efforts to recover the ship is because while it's impounded, they are not responsible to any of its costs, and can simultaneously paint the seizure in such a way as to cause maximum negative publicity for their opponent's actions in this situation? With the added advantage that when they do get it back, they can charge for repair costs due to failure on the part of the others to carry out necessary basic maintenance?

I don't think the ship is technically impounded, that would mean Ghana had control of it and.it's crew.

The actual situation seems to be that it is prevented from leaving port. The crew are still aboard and in control. Actual seizure would involve the Ghanaian military (I hear you laugh, but they are well trained and experienced, plus they have ties with China - Argentina really doesn't want to play this game) going aboard as baliffs.
Most of the crew have flown home. Official status of the ship is detained, and the matter is going to the UN (who will probably infect them all with cholera).