GRAND FORKS (AP) - The new commander of the Grand Forks Air Force Base is not making a big deal out of the fact that she's the first woman to hold the position.

"I don't look at it as being any different than a male commander," said Col. Diane Hull, who took over the command of the base's 319th Air Refueling Wing in a ceremony Tuesday. "We've had women in the service for a long time, and we're finally getting old enough to assume these positions. I'm very honored."

Hull, 44, takes command at a time when the Grand Forks base is making the transition to an unmanned aircraft installation. She joined the Air Force in 1983, base officials said.

Hull came to Grand Forks from the Tanker Airlift Control Center at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois. She said she has not yet piloted UAVs, but she had a chance to work with a Global Hawk unit when she was deployed in southwest Asia.

"I'm very impressed with its capabilities," she said. "That really is the wave of the future."

Hull said her father, a U.S. Army officer, inspired her to pursue a male-dominated career.

"He just instilled in me a sense of duty and integrity, and I've wanted to be a military officer to follow in his footsteps," she said.

Hull succeeds Col. William Bender, who's been given a new assignment at the U.S. European Command headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany.

Grand Forks was the busiest air-refueling base in the Air Mobility Command in 2005, accounting for 76 percent of all refueling missions over Iraq and Afghanistan, Maj. Gen. James Hawkins, head of the Air Mobility Command headquarters at Scott Air Force Base, said at Tuesday's ceremony.

"That's no small feat," he said.

Hawkins presented Bender with a Legion of Merit medal for his service.

"Your reputation, which rests on four pillars - pride, professionalism, preparedness and patriotism - is what you should be proud of and one you must continue to build upon under Col. Hull's leadership," Bender told his staff in his farewell speech.