More than 3,000 Google employees have reportedly signed a letter protesting the company’s work with the Pentagon that could help with drone strikes.

The letter, obtained by The New York Times, includes the line: “We believe that Google should not be in the business of war”.

Dozens of senior engineers have added their name to the letter, which has been circulating internally for weeks.

It calls on the company to stop working on Project Maven, a Pentagon pilot programme that uses artificial intelligence to analyse video imagery.

Those signing the letter, which is addressed to Sundar Pichai, the Google chief executive, also want a promise that the company will never “build warfare technology”.