The top Air Force flight school students often get the best shot at the hottest planes.

But instead of listing the A-10 Warthog as the first choice on her “dream sheet” of planes she'd like to fly, 2nd Lt. Raquel Dronenburg picked the plane virtually everyone else in her class of 22 had hoped to avoid — the one that will never have room for a pilot in the cockpit.

“I wanted to actually do something productive with my time instead of sitting around and waiting for training to start,” said Dronenburg, one of the top students in the class, explaining that flying a manned aircraft meant delays that could run 15 months.

Pilots typically want to fly in the air, not from a ground-based cubicle. That's why Monday's graduation from the Air Force's Unmanned Aerial System Fundamentals course, the first of its kind at Randolph AFB, was so remarkable.

It marks a shift in the Air Force's culture. The service's center of gravity has always been the pilot wrapped in a cockpit, engaged in mortal combat, but technology and insurgent warfare are driving big changes.

John Pike, director and founder of globalsecurity.org, a military information Web site, called the cultural change “fundamental, radical and revolutionary” — striking at the heart of how the Air Force sees itself.

“They've spent most of the 20th century celebrating Eddie Rickenbacker,” Pike said, referring to the renowned World War I fighter pilot. “It's a fighter pilot's service. Those are the heroes, those are the ones that get promoted to general. It's a real challenge to their culture.”

The Air Force is determined to produce 300 unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) pilots over the next three years because they're badly needed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The service has 27 unmanned aircraft flying over Iraq and Afghanistan at any time, but it wants to almost double those patrols by 2012.

To meet demand, it's included UAVs in a list of planes that flight school graduates can train for, along with fighters, bombers, tankers and helicopters. Flight school graduates can volunteer to fly UAVs — that's what Dronenburg, 23, of Prescott, Ariz., did — or be nudged into the field by having limited options, which happened to six of the nine pilots in the UAS class.

They weren't forced into the UAS track, but “it may have been the best of two bad choices in their mind,” said Lt. Col. Chris Wellborn, commander of the 563rd Flying Training Squadron at Randolph.

“You've got two people in the Air Force: one that accepts the UAS as a huge part of the Air Force, and two that are manned to the death,” said Capt. Tom Moore, UAS Fundamentals course flight officer. “Why did they volunteer? The future of the Air Force, and they want to be a part of it.”

But the Air Force isn't stopping with them. A UAS class of 17 starts here next month, and 10 officers who've never flown a plane will go to Pueblo, Colo., to learn to fly small civilian planes like the Cessna before they train in UAVs. It's a first step in an experimental program.

Tellingly, the Air Force is even mulling the idea of opening the field to enlistees — something the Army and Marines have done but which would have been unthinkable before the war on terror began in earnest after September 2001.

Veteran Air Force pilots have generally resisted the call to fly unmanned aerial vehicles. While some pilots have voluntarily crossed over to UAVs, the Air Force has forced some into the new field, said Lt. Col. Tadd Sholtis, an Air Force spokesman. He did not know how many pilots have moved but said most were in aging fighters and bombers — some of which are being phased out.

Retired Gen. Ronald Fogleman, who served as Air Force chief of staff from 1994-97, questioned the wisdom of forcing pilots into UAVs. He favors having retired combat pilots fly unmanned vehicles, but former Air Force Secretary F. Whitten Peters doubts they'd want to work at Creech AFB, Nev., the service's UAV flight hub and the place where most Air Force training occurs.

“I'm not sure how many people would sign up to work out at Creech, to be honest with you,” said Peters, who served from 1997 to 2001. “It's a brutal existence. These guys don't get much time off, and they're on 12-hour shifts constantly.”

Fogleman, Peters and retired Gen. Lloyd W. “Fig” Newton, former head of the Air Education and Training Command and a Vietnam War F-4 Phantom pilot, understand why the Air Force is expanding the UAV field. But Newton, who flew with the Thunderbirds aerial demonstration team and later became the nation's seventh African American four-star general, said he would not have traded his cockpit for a cubicle, at least not voluntarily.

“Would I willingly give up a manned cockpit for an unmanned cockpit? The answer is no. There is certainly a huge difference, and a lot more excitement about being in a manned aircraft,” Newton said.

Today's shift of pilots into UAVs reminds Fogleman of a similar incident in the 1950s, when the Air Force shunted hundreds of fliers into the SAGE air defense system. Some went into it “kicking and fighting, and some of them turned in their wings,” he said.

It's not an “absolute truth” that pilots cling to the heroic notion of sitting in the cockpit, Fogleman said. There's also a sense that a lot of training would go to waste if you veered in another direction.

“For an experienced fighter pilot, there is a fundamental belief or feeling that says the United States Air Force has invested a lot of time and effort in me to make me a fighter pilot, and that's what I want to do.”

The option of turning to enlistees is more problematic. Fogleman thinks an aviator is better suited to the job, and he isn't sure pilots fresh out of training should do it because they have little experience.

Peters, though, said young soldiers routinely engage in firefights that do as much damage as a bomb and that higher-ranking enlistees could handle the job just as well as officers — as they already do in the Army and Marines. Their UAV operators tend to hold ranks from private first class to staff sergeant, Army Maj. Hilton Nunez said.

Those services are flying UAVs like the RQ-11B Raven, which troops can carry on their backs. Designed to give smaller units better situational awareness and protection, the Raven is battery-powered and can fly for 90 minutes. Classes for another plane, the Shadow, graduated 240 students in 2002. That will jump to 720 a year by summer.

“These systems are excellent for counter-insurgency. They are also useful in my opinion for an entire spectrum of conflicts,” said military columnist and author Austin Bay, an Iraq veteran who credits the UAV's rise to terrorists and technology. “Don't make the mistake of staying with the horse cavalry when the tank has arrived.”

The Air Force has gotten that message. Dronenburg and eight others took a four-week classroom and simulator course that introduced them to UAV tactics and a variety of systems, including some armed aircraft. They also went to Camp Bullis to see convoy training and watched live Predator feeds. The next step is a 59-day course at Creech, followed by deployment this summer.

Pilots like Dronenburg will fly unmanned planes for three years and then move to a manned aircraft. That made UAVs more appealing to 1st Lt. Jason Ruiz, who dreamed of flying the C-17 Globemaster III as a kid growing up in Charleston, S.C.

“Initially it was kind of a disappointment to not be in the cockpit flying. But the further we get into the program, the more we learn about what it is we'll actually be doing, how we're supporting the ground troops,” said Ruiz, 25.

Asked if she worries that UAVs could hurt her career, Dronenburg said that's not the point.

“I think personally I'm more concerned about bringing home my brothers and sisters safely,” she said.