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Andy Wilson, sales and marketing director of BAE’s autonomous vehicles division, said: “This is going to be a philosophical debate, not a technological debate.

“We have the ability to do these things, but how long will it take for people to accept that there is nobody at the front of the plane?”

The US is currently leading the world in UAV technology and the plane that flew with the British Harriers during Operation Mountain Fury belonged to the USAF.

However, British companies are moving into the market with a stereotypical use of innovation rather than resources to develop UAV technology.

A single Northrup Grumman Global Hawk costs more than four F16s, but when BAE Systems set about building a UAV its engineers simply stuck a motorcycle engine on the back of a glider kit.

The BMW motorbike chassis is still leaning against a shed at BAE’s factory in Warton, Lancashire.

BAE’s Herti UAV, which stands for high endurance rapid technology insertion, became the first unmanned aircraft to fly in the UK when it was launched from a remote airstrip in western Scotland last year. The project has only recently been declassified.

Herti has now joined the RAF’s Warfare Centre and the military’s technical experts are working with BAE to develop the aircraft’s surveillance and reconnaissance role.

In the next two weeks BAE will also be awarded a £200 million contract to develop a fighter UAV, which could be the blueprint for all future unmanned fighters built in the UK.

QinetiQ, another British defence contractor, is also working on UAVs with a project called Zephyr.

This will be little more than a flying wing, 18 metres wide and covered in solar cells. The cells will power tiny propellers and charge batteries that will keep the plane flying at night.

Zephyr is being developed for long missions, three to six months in duration, and it will fly at extreme altitudes doing the sort of surveillance work currently done by U2 spy planes.

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