The Rise of the Robo-Fighters ; the Mantis Can Fly for 24 Hours Without Refuelling, Do the Surveillance Job of Four Helicopters, Acquire Its Own Enemy Targets and Deliver a Deadly Payload - All Without a Pilot and Crew. But Should We Be Afraid of Britain's New Robotic Air Force?

Summary

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The aircraft is the size of a medium range bomber, with huge grey wings stretching 70ft across the hangar. It looks for all the world like any conventional aircraft - the wings, the nose, the wheels are all familiar. The engineers standing in front of it are dwarfed by its bulk. Modules beneath the wings can carry air-to-ground missiles and precision-guided bombs. Other racks on the nose can carry surveillance equipment so advanced it can decrypt and listen to mobile phone messages instantly as it flies over, at heights of up to 60,000ft. It takes a while for you to notice the most important fact - there is no cockpit. There are no windows anywhere on the craft, - and no doors.

The Mantis carries no human crew - one of the reasons it can stay airborne for 24 hours. The plane is controlled by a set of computer components not that far removed from the chips and boards inside a highend personal laptop. But unlike the American Predator and Reaper drones now flying over Afghanistan and Pakistan, this isn't flown by pilots via satellite control from a bunker outside Las Vegas. It flies itself.

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The Rise of the Robo-Fighters ; the Mantis Can Fly for 24 Hours Without Refuelling, Do the Surveillance Job of Four Helicopters, Acquire Its Own Enemy Targets and Deliver a Deadly Payload - All Without a Pilot and Crew. But Should We Be Afraid of Britain's New Robotic Air Force?

The aircraft is sitting in the hangars of BAE Systems, just outside Preston - next to an airfield where Eurofighters are shooting vertically upwards from a take-o strip. The site is vast, with limousines ferrying suited executives from one part to another, and visitors carefully shepherded only into the areas they are cleared to see. To enter Mantis's hangar, you have to pass through a glass cubicle that scans for any transmitting equipment - phones and cameras are strictly forbidden. A recording suddenly blares, 'Mobile phone detected!' as one of my hosts remembers he has a BlackBerry in his coat. I'm allowed to see Mantis, but not to know where the aircraft is currently flying.

Mantis isn't a 'drone'. It's a robotic aircraft. It's among the first of a new breed of armed UAV (...

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