BRITISH boffins have designed the world’s first solar- powered spy drone. A Heath Robinson-type creation, it will take photographs from 60,000ft and provide the armed forces with a budget version of America’s surveillance satellites.

The Zephyr had its first successful trial flight over New Mexico earlier this month and is scheduled to be in service over Iraq and Afghanistan within two years. It is designed to stay airborne for up to three months and relay pictures of targets as small as 10in across. It is also intended to relay radio signals from special forces soldiers in remote locations.

“We’re not saying this will replace satellites, but it will be complementary and in many respects more effective; it will certainly be cheaper,” said Caroline Slim, director of the Zephyr project at QinetiQ, the former defence research agency which is based at Farnborough, Hampshire. “It is self-sustaining, has no fuel and we think its time has come.”

The armed forces have an urgent need of a replacement for the RAF’s fleet of 55-year-old Canberra PR9 jets, which until the last one’s retirement in July were used to take precision photographs from 50,000ft.

Britain has a small network of five military satellites but they are mainly used for communications, not photography. The Zephyrs are likely to cost about £1m each compared with more than £15m for a satellite.

The Zephyr is a fragile craft, weighing just 72lb and consisting mostly of a 40ft lightweight carbon composite wing coated with solar panels. These recharge 40 lithium batteries that provide the energy to power its two propellers. A special “space grease” has been developed to protect its bearings at extreme temperatures.

A remaining challenge is to find a reliable way to launch it, as it is too weak to take off under its own power. At the trials three men ran along the runway and released it on a gust of wind.

In 2003 an earlier model failed to set a drone altitude record of 132,000ft when its launch balloon sprang a leak off the Cornish coast; in February 2005 a Zephyr released from a balloon at 30,000ft over Australia tipped upside down in unexpected winds and was lost.

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