Lt Col Kareen Hart

Lt Col Kareen Hart serves as a Department of the Air Force senior military fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). Prior to her assignment as a fellow, she was chief of the Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Systems and Capabilities Division, Headquarters Air Combat Command, Joint Base Langley-Eustis. The division was responsible for the development, funding, acquisition, and integration of ISR capabilities into Air Combat Command’s mission and weapons systems, including the sensor-to-shooter and cybersecurity portfolio. Additionally, the division served as the program management office for Air Force Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications and as the Integrated Broadcast Service Executive Agent staff.

Hart received her commission as a distinguished graduate of the Duke University Reserve Officer Training Corps program in May 2005. She is a career intelligence officer who has served in a variety of Air Force and joint positions, to include squadron command and deputy group command. She has held operational and staff assignments across multiple specialties, including signals intelligence, analysis, targeting, and intelligence support to acquisitions. She has also worked at both Major Command and Joint Staff positions, with unique assignments supporting nuclear modernization and joint strategic plans and programming. As commander, 15th Intelligence Squadron, her unit was responsible for authoring global kinetic and nonkinetic target systems analysis reports and intermediate target development. She has deployed three times in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation New Dawn in roles including cryptologic support team lead and senior intelligence duty officer.

Hart holds a BA in political science from Duke University, an MA in global security and intelligence studies from the American Military University, an MS from the Air Force Blue Horizons Fellowship for strategy and technology, and an MPhil from the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, the Air Force’s graduate school for strategists. She lives in Virginia with her husband and two children.