Spy planes: the news industry's eyes in the sky

A few years ago I visited one of the frontlines in the West's battle against Al-Qaeda.

It wasn't in Afghanistan or Pakistan, but inside an innocuous-looking prefab building on the outskirts of Las Vegas.

At Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, US and British serviceman control heavily armed Reaper and Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), or drones, flying high in the sky thousands of miles away.

UAVs - or unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) as they're also sometimes called - are playing an increasingly important role in counter-terrorism operations. But, alongside their place as a weapon of war, more peaceful uses are also being explored for tiny drones, from scientific research to monitoring disaster zones from the air.

The development of relatively low-cost unmanned aircraft systems fitted with small high-definition cameras is also beginning to generate interest in the news industry.

Dramatic aerial footage of recent demonstrations in Warsaw shot using a small Polish-made drone gave a tantalising glimpse of how they could be used as newsgathering tools.

Photographers covering election demos in Moscow also deployed a UAV - prompting some onlookers to suspect they had spotted a UFO over the Russian capital.

The resulting images were widely used by international news organisations including the BBC (above).

Under current UK regulations, a small drone can be deployed providing the operator can see it at all times - giving it a range of a few hundred metres.

In theory, that could be perfectly adequate to cover events such as protests, large fires or police operations - the sort of stories that news organisations often send helicopters to cover.

The problem, however, is that tighter regulations apply (in the UK at least) to unmanned aircraft flying in built up and congested areas - exactly the sort of places where most news stories take place. Understandably so - no news organisation would want to have to deal with the legal consequences if its unmanned camera crash-landing onto the head of a peaceful protestor.

Gadget geeks in the news business such as me are excited by the prospect of using Big Boys' Toys as part of our newsgathering.

A nascent group has even been set up to explore the possibilities.

It may be some time yet before drone journalism becomes commonplace but, potentially, the sky's the limit.

Stuart Hughes is a BBC World Affairs producer.