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Military personnel have spent the equivalent of more than 140 days taking part in stunts on Top Gear, but the MoD insists taking part in the BBC show is a valuable way of raising public awareness of the armed forces' work.

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the MoD revealed that military personnel were involved in filming for the equivalent of 141 days and civilian officials spent 48 days working on items for the programme.

In 2004 an Apache helicopter gunship attempted to get a missile lock on a Lotus Exige sports car driven by presenter Jeremy Clarkson. A year later, Clarkson took on a Challenger tank with a Range Rover and then attempted to avoid sniper fire while testing a Porsche Boxster and Mercedes SLK.

In 2006 it was the turn of his co-presenter Richard Hammond to take on the military, racing a Porsche Cayenne against a parachutist from the elite Red Devils display team. Since then, there have been many more stunts involving help from the MoD.

In its response to the Freedom of Information request, the MoD said no additional cost was incurred as a result of taking part in the programmes. A spokesman said "in no circumstances" were resources diverted from operations for the events.

"The filming utilised scheduled training hours and resources which would have been consumed irrespective of the BBC filming or not, and were therefore used at no additional cost to MoD," he said.

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