Engineers have two months to offer ideas, with the best ones winning funding to explore them further.

Harriet Baldwin, minister for defence procurement, said the MOD wanted to “use the latest technology to keep our personnel safe”.

She said: “We’re challenging industry and academia to work with us to design ground-breaking autonomous systems that will get supplies to the front line.”

Amazon in December claimed to have carried out its first UK drone delivery from a depot in Cambridge.

However at present the company’s fleet of drones can only carry a payload of around 5lb and must have good, clear weather to fly.

The safety of drones has also come under the spotlight after reports of near-misses between them and conventional aircraft around airports.

Liz Quintana, senior research fellow for futures and technology at the Royal United Services Institute, said creating unmanned vehicles was a key focus for militaries and cargo drones would be “slightly less controversial than using armed drones”.