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Take, for instance, the headlines UAVs grabbed during combat in Afghanistan and Iraq as they provided real-time surveillance of the battlefield or in Yemen, where an armed UAV destroyed a carload of suspected terrorists.

But when it comes to the nuts and bolts of UAV technology, it’s head-scratching time for most — unless you have an engineering degree from MIT.

That technology is explained — thankfully, in a way Joe America can understand — in the Discovery Wings Channel’s “Aeropace: UAVs.”

The half-hour show gets you up close and personal with several aircraft under development, from a “micro-UAV” that weighs only 2 grams to a solar-powered flying monster capable of winging it from Paris to southern England.

And while there’s no combat-surveillance footage during this episode of the “Aerospace” series, there’s plenty of drama as engineers, college students and military program managers test several vehicles, with mixed results.

At Virginia’s Fort A.P. Hill, designers unveil the Vigilante, which is based on a $50,000 helicopter kit. Crammed with electronics instead of a pilot, the UAV stutter-steps its way through a demonstration for the media and military brass, much to the engineers’ chagrin.

But once the bugs are worked out of the system, Vigilante delivers as promised. It flies autonomously — that is, on its own, without being controlled by a ground-based pilot — for a low-level flight demonstration.

Autonomous flight is the Next Big Thing in UAV technology. Many current UAVs are controlled via ground station, where pilots and commanders navigate the craft to its destination and back.

However, UAVs in development — and some already in the military — will fly a preplanned route, controlled by onboard computer systems.

The next step — and the most interesting portion of this program — is the “thinking” UAV, a craft capable of observing a scenario on the ground, then making decisions based on those observations.

For example, an unmanned combat air vehicle, or UCAV, armed with anti-tank missiles could be dispatched to the site of a biological-agent attack, where it would prioritize tasks. If armed, it might locate and engage targets, deciding where it should fly and what it should avoid.

These “thinkers” are demonstrated by competing teams from Canada’s University of Waterloo and Georgia Tech. The schools are participating in a three-year competition to develop a UAV with artificial intelligence. The competition is revealing, as it highlights the frustrations of developing cutting-edge technology.

While it sounds like something out of a “Terminator” movie, these thinking, flying robots seem to be the next logical step in military combat aviation.