Mr May said in response: “It’s a long game… this is a 25-year programme and, during that time, we still expect to get the 3,500 high-value technical jobs within the freeport.

“We will obviously look at that and review that over time, but it’s really the sort of regional impact, bringing on the supply chain, making sure there’s other jobs in addition to the ones to land in those tax sites that we obviously want to also achieve.”

Michael Gilbert, project director at Supacat, which is building the military vehicles in partnership with Babcock, said the freeport had made a “very positive contribution”.

Brendan Staniforth, business planning director from Babcock, said the Jackal programme was an opportunity to bring a “skills agenda to that line of work”.