[Aktungbby]

The Chinese government has previously accused the U.S. of overdramatizing the situation in the South China Sea as a pretext to build up defenses of the U.S. and its allies in the region.
The U.S. has denied those accusations, arguing earlier this year that China has heightened tension in the region by reclaiming more than 3,200 acres of land in parts of the South China Sea over the previous two years and using “coercive tactics short of armed conflict” to assert power in the region.
The U.S. regularly sends ships and surveillance aircraft through the South China Sea on what the Pentagon describes as “freedom-of-navigation operations,” designed to signal that the waters should remain open to all.
At times, those operations have led to tension with the Chinese military, which regularly intercepts U.S. planes and ships, sometimes in a way the Pentagon has deemed unsafe or unprofessional. But the Chinese seizure this week of U.S. equipment marks an escalation the U.S. military so far hasn’t seen.

The Bowditch was about to recover the glider when a Chinese Dalang III class Chinese warship approached within 500 yards of the Bowditch, launched a small vessel and snatched the drone out of the water, the Pentagon said. The Pentagon said the drone is known as an “ocean glider” and valued at approximately $150,000, one of many the U.S. Navy uses around the world to collect bathymetric data from the sea, along with data on the water’s salinity, temperature and current flow. Bright yellow and about 5 to 10 feet long, the drones often move slowly and autonomously to gather data about the ocean for weeks or months before U.S. Navy ships retrieve them. "The UUV was lawfully conducting a military survey in the waters of the South China Sea," one official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"It's a sovereign immune vessel, clearly marked in English not to be removed from the water - that it was U.S. property," the official said.
The boat brought the device back to the Chinese warship, which then headed away.
The Bowditch contacted the Chinese vessel by radio and demanded the return of the glider. The Chinese ship acknowledged the radio transmission but ignored the request to return it, the Pentagon said.
China’s Defense Ministry says it will return the U.S. Navy underwater drone it captured operating in international waters in the South China Sea, after it seized the device to ensure the “safe navigation of passing ships.”

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/12/17/china-returns-us-drone-after-explaining-seizure/95555610/ Shades of VP Dan Quail(he couldn't spell either)

"China steals United States Navy research drone in international waters - rips it out of water and takes it to China in unprecedented act," Trump said in an early morning tweet.
Trump originally misspelled “unprecedented” as "unpresidented" but later deleted the tweet and reposted.

Well we got our drone back....they need to confiscate his tweeter! his misuse of it has been...unpresidented