Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, often referred to as "drones," don't get a lot of good press. Usually, when a drone makes the news, it's just completed an airstrike somewhere across the world, likely in the Middle East, taking out a structure thought to contain al Qaeda militants.

But there's a softer, friendlier side to UAVs  -- they're not all the terrifying, death-from-above variety popularized in media. UAVs, thanks to their small size and ability to be controlled remotely, have been finding their niche doing jobs that are too messy, dangerous, or downright impossible for manned aircraft to perform.

Alaska's big role in domestic drone programs

Now, a new, long-term Federal Aviation Administration bill aims to increase the number of UAVs in American airspace over the next four years, designating specific airspace for UAV flight and testing, similar to the restricted airspace utilized by military installations.

H.R. 658, the FAA reauthorization bill, mandates that the FAA must designate six UAV test ranges in U.S. airspace within about six months. But a special clause, and the one most important to Alaska, will designate portions of airspace from the Aleutian Islands to the North Slope for 24-hour UAV use "for research and commercial purposes."

The amendment was written by Alaska Sen. Mark Begich, with the University of Alaska Unmanned Aircraft Program in mind. That program, based at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, has been on the cutting-edge of UAV technology, thanks to Alaska's myriad uses for the science.

Researchers with the program have been getting around the state, too: last year, the program performed tests in the Aleutians and Prince William Sound. In November, the program took a trip to Prudhoe Bay, where a UAV observed the maintenance needs of fire-breathing gas flare stations.

In January, program manager Greg Walker was on hand in Nome, Alaska, as a Russian fuel tanker prepared to offload more than a million gallons of fuel. Walker and a small Aeryon scout UAV surveyed ice conditions in advance of the ship's arrival and prepared to assist with surveillance in the case of a spill.

Walker said that Alaska's unique need for UAV technology -- particularly in far-flung Arctic regions -- played a big role in the bill's Arctic language.

"The Arctic is the canary in the mine for climate change," Walker said. "The Arctic has lots of need, it's very understudied, and it's hard to get there to study it. It's a job to study a river flooding in Tennessee. It's really a job to study a river flooding on the North Slope."

In addition to environmental uses like performing wildlife counts on easily-spooked animal populations or surveying forest fires where the smoke would be too thick for manned aircraft to fly, the UAVs being tested by the program have commercial purposes as well.

The trip to Prince William Sound last summer was to test capability of the Aeryon Scout -- a 2-1/2 pound, four-propellered, hovering UAV -- in examining shorelines in the event of an oil spill. The BP-owned Scout could have been used for a similar purpose in the sea ice off of Nome, had a spill occurred there.

Possibility of an Arctic oil spill is chief among lingering questions of offshore oil development in the Arctic -- and Walker has also worked with Royal Dutch Shell, the oil supermajor looking at oil prospects in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska's northwest coastline. In advance of that development, in response to environmental concerns, Shell is interested in conducting wildlife surveys in the area, and UAVs offer an ideal way to do that.