RAF pilot at Akrotiri tells ITV News: 'IS are the enemy. My mission, if required, is to kill the enemy'

The debate over the moral rights or wrongs of intervention in Syria may be raging in the UK, but it's not a debate you'll hear at RAF Akrotiri, the British base here in Cyprus.

This is where any attacks on the so-called Islamic State in Syria will come from. Here they have the weaponry, the expertise and capacity to deploy within minutes of any vote expanding their mandate.

Their role is clear - they respond to their orders. They will not, publicly at least, question whether their deployment is militarily appropriate.

A move into Syria would mark an expansion of their current role however their remit will remain the same just expanded across another border.

Since September last year Operation Shader has been based here at Akrotiri. Its mission to degrade ISIS in Iraq.

In October I spent time with the men and women running this mission. Then they were clear - should the call come they were ready - that call may well come today.

"Isil are the enemy - we can find them, we can fix them and we can target them very successfully," one pilot told me. "When required that is what we do. My mission, if required, is to kill the enemy."

How many have been killed is impossible to determine, so too how many will need to die before the grip ISIS hold on parts of Iraq and Syria can be released.

"Recent history has shown us this is not going to be a quick win, a short campaign, we know that," the pilot told me.

"We are going to be here for as long as it takes and with the coalition we'll make the mission as quick as we possibly can. It is a difficult task - they are an absolutely brutal enemy. Everyone recognises that it will take time to defeat them but defeat them we will."

These pilots may have speed and height over their enemy but a very real threat remains.

The memory of what happened to a Jordanian pilot when he came down in ISIS territory in Syria is never far from minds. Muath al Kasasbeh was caged and set alight - his death filmed by his killers.

"Obviously the tragic murder of the Jordanian pilot plays on your mind. If you are a rational human being you can't see that imagery and not think about it, especially if you're a fast jet pilot doing virtually the same job he was doing".

"Fortunately when you're flying a fast jet over enemy territory you're busy, you're focused and you are concentrating on the job in hand. I save thoughts about Muath al Kasasbeh for quiet moments when I am not at work."