Hijacking of drones/UAVs?
In August the US Navy lost control of an unmanned helicopter. This flew towards the US capital. According to reports, after about 20 minutes the operators regained control. Did they just lose control or was control taken over by someone else for a limited time as a test?
Some time ago I was watching a Canadian Pacific train pass by. It had four engines, two at the front, one about two thirds of the way along the train and one at the rear. The two crew members ride in the front engine. One drives this and there are wired connections to control the adjoining engine. Apparently the ones cut into a train or at the rear are controlled by radio from the front engine.
Thinking of the chaos at radio control model aircraft and car meets if frequencies are not carefully allocated I wondered if CPR trains ever suffer from radio interference or temporary black-outs. Worse still, would it be possible for somebody to use a pirate radio set to take over the remote controlled engines and deliberately give opposite control inputs? The train would not climb the hill too well if two of the engines are in reverse or applying the brakes.
Then I wondered the same about drones. It seems highly likely to me that possible enemy states and terrorist organisations are monitoring the signals to American (and other) drones and working on ways to take control of them, possibly even to turn them against their owners. Have others wondered about this possibility? Have there been instances of unauthorised control of drones? Was the August US Navy helicopter incident an example?