Sikorsky is jumping into a lucrative and growing market. Steven Zaloga, a senior analyst at Teal Group Corp. in Fairfax, Virginia, said unmanned aerial vehicles represent “one of the few dynamic markets” in the aerospace industry hit hard in the recession. The Teal Group estimates the global market for unmanned aerial vehicle hardware will rise from $2.9 billion this year to $5.5 billion in 2019, Zaloga said.

Engineers at the sprawling China Lake complex, one of the nation’s largest weapons test facilities with 6,600 workers, are hoping to be at the forefront. “We’re sort of at the same stage as we were in 1914 when we began to arm airplanes,” said Steven Zaloga, a military analyst with the Teal Group Corp. Pentagon officials say robotic planes have been particularly effective. As a result, demand for them has climbed sharply and Pentagon planners have rethought how they develop and deploy new weapon systems, analysts said.

But the mini drones are far more common, making up about 75 percent of the military’s pilotless planes. They are cheaper to build, easier to use, and popular with the ground troops because they have saved hundreds of lives, said Steven Zaloga, a senior analyst with the Teal Group Corp., a defense consulting firm in Fairfax. Aiding their proliferation is the Pentagon’s decision to give millions of dollars to the commands overseas to spend on their most pressing wartime needs without going through the time-consuming purchasing bureaucracy, Zaloga said. Getting rid of the red tape opened the flood gates for small firms. “These mini drones gave the people with their boots on the ground mini-intelligence systems, which in turn spurred more demand,” Zaloga said. “Drones are no longer just for the general sitting in his Pentagon office.”

Experts say the technology is so complex that the program simply needs time to mature. Analyst Steven Zaloga, who follows the missile industry for the Teal Group defense consulting firm, said he was not surprised that the Pentagon panels gave the troubled THAAD a green light. “People have to be more patient with it,” Zaloga said. “New technology doesn’t follow schedules real tightly.”