From typhoons to tech leadership: Karen Wingeart’s journey to NSWC Dahlgren Division

From typhoons to tech leadership: Karen Wingeart's journey to NSWC Dahlgren Division

By Morgan Tabor, NSWCDD Corporate Communications

In 2002, U.S. Navy Lt. Karen Wingeart noticed a disturbance in the Pacific Ocean develop into a tropical depression from her post as a Typhoon Warning Duty Officer at the Joint Typhoon Warning Center in Hawaii. Her job was both critical and demanding, requiring her to analyze satellite data, model forecasts and limited sensor inputs to deliver time-sensitive warnings.

The massive storms she tracked had the potential to impact ships, bases and entire island populations. When sensors and communications failed, Wingeart and her team often served as the sole source of reliable information guiding operational and safety decisions.

By early December, Wingeart knew the rapidly intensifying storm headed for Guam - home to major U.S. military installations - would be anything but ordinary. Within three days, the disturbance reached typhoon status and earned a name and a place in the historical record: Pongsona.

On Dec. 8, the storm made landfall in Guam. Wingeart, the forecaster on duty, upgraded it to a super typhoon - when sustained winds reached 150 mph. As power failed across the island, she stayed connected via cellphone to a network of local forecasters to ensure information and warnings were passed to government and emergency operations officials in Guam and nearby islands.

More than two decades later, Wingeart still remembers the sound of the wind and rain of Super Typhoon Pongsona as she spoke to those on the ground in Guam. Being a forecaster, she said, "was kind of like putting a puzzle together, except I don't know what the color of all the pieces are."

Today, she serves as division head of the Maritime Warfare Control Systems Division at Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division.

Predicting storms, she once told a colleague, is engineering at its core.

A history of service

Wingeart was raised in a family shaped by generations of Navy service.

Both grandfathers served in World War II, and her father served during the Cold War. Trips on her family's fishing boats fostered an early comfort with the ocean.

"My grandfather would tell me stories about being stationed on a ship in the Pacific Ocean," she recalled. "Life at sea just seemed so normal."

When her brother brought home a Navy brochure, Wingeart was sold. She entered the U.S. Naval Academy in 1992, majoring in oceanography. In Annapolis, Maryland, she quickly encountered the realities of Navy life: sailing a 44-foot sloop through heavy weather from Annapolis to Halifax, training with Marines and joining some of the first waves of women serving on combatant ships.

"I loved being on ships," she said. "I loved being a part of the engineering department and seeing how it all fit together with the combat capability of the ship."

After graduating in 1996, Wingeart earned her Surface Warfare Officer (SWO) designation and received her first set of orders, to the guided-missile destroyer USS Barry (DDG 52). She knew immediately she was where she belonged. "I really wanted to be hands-on, to learn how the ship operated and everything I could about the ship's engineering services and systems."

On USS Barry, she served as an electrical officer and later damage control assistant, deploying to the Persian Gulf where her crew conducted maritime interdiction operations enforcing U.S. sanctions. It was a fast-paced and often unpredictable environment, especially when maneuvering ships for boarding operations. Steering a warship through the Gulf's shifting currents demanded precision, intuition and deep environmental awareness.

During one particularly high-pressure boarding operation, Wingeart found herself conning - directing the ship's movements - with an admiral standing just inches behind her, watching every decision she made. It was the kind of moment that can rattle even seasoned Sailors. When he questioned her approach, she calmly explained the environmental factors that made a tighter maneuver unsafe.

Her instincts kicked in as she relied on that lifelong "seaman's eye" to read the currents and wind in real time.

As she describes it, the admiral quickly saw in her decision "how much the environment changed and how we could counteract those conditions." The exchange became a defining moment, revealing her ability to stay composed under scrutiny and foreshadowing the next chapter of her naval career.

Becoming a METOC officer

After completing her first Navy tour, Wingeart exercised her long-standing option to transition into the meteorology and oceanography (METOC) community. It was a shift that connected her academic background, operational experience and passion for understanding the sea. She attended the Naval Postgraduate School from 1999 to 2001 for her master's degree in both meteorology and oceanography. That specialized training prepared her for the role of forecasting storms for the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, the Navy's equivalent to a National Hurricane Center forecaster.

On her watch, storms didn't follow textbook rules. Her first month shattered one of meteorology's basic guidelines: that hurricanes rarely form within one degree of the equator. Wingeart watched it happen. The powerful December 1999 storm caused extensive damage and prepared her for forecasting Super Typhoon Pongsona.

When she left the post in Hawaii, her going away gift was a photo of that storm.

Recall to service

Wingeart went on to teach at the Naval Academy and transitioned to the Navy Reserve. In 2009, she accepted a position in the Chem-Bio Defense Division at Dahlgren. She had only been at NSWCDD for about a year when her world shifted again.

In 2010, during the height of the Global War on Terrorism, the Navy activated an internal mobilization list, and Wingeart's name appeared. "My youngest son was a year old, so that was hard," she said. Nevertheless, she packed her bags.

She spent 2011 deployed to Kuwait as the executive officer of a detainee facility, an assignment far outside anything her SWO or METOC career would have predicted. "The Command Sergeant Major said, 'None of that relates to how you got selected,'" she remembered. Her leadership qualifications had simply made her a match for the mission.

It was demanding, exhausting work. "Not a lot of people knew we existed," she said. She regularly conducted prisoner escort missions that could run 30 hours straight with no sleep. Yet, even in the most difficult assignment of her career, she found meaning. A Sailor under her command asked Wingeart to re-enlist her, with one special request.

"She said, 'Can you reenlist me at sea?'" Wingeart found a way. A Kuwaiti naval base allowed her to take a small team out on the water aboard a patrol craft, fittingly, one the Sailor herself was qualified to drive. After the reenlistment, they spent hours underway. "That was pretty cool," she said. "The worst job I ever had, was the best memory."

In a tour defined by exhaustion and uncertainty, she found the kind of moment that proves even your hardest assignments can hold unexpected rewards.

Returning to her Dahlgren roots

Wingeart returned to NSWCDD after redeployment, continued her Reserve service until retiring as a commander and steadily advanced through technical and leadership roles at Dahlgren. She became a systems engineer in the Combat Systems Department, then a branch head in several divisions, eventually moving into her current role as division head of the Maritime Warfare Control Systems Division.

"I felt like I was going back to my Navy roots," she said.

One of the major programs under her division is the Mark 41 Vertical Launching System, the same missile launching system capability on USS Barry. "I knew about it, obviously, because I served there, and it feels like I'm back supporting the Navy where I started, now leading the people advancing the very system I once relied on."

Her division directly impacts today's fleet readiness, analyzing missile and drone engagements in the Red Sea and supporting rapidly shifting missions such as counter-UAS (Unmanned Aerial System). "Absolutely critical," she said. "I'm proud to say that team came from my division."

Her background as a SWO, METOC and systems engineer gives her a unique lens for leading teams that work at the intersection of software, warfare systems, environmental effects and operational needs.

"Because I was a Sailor out there," she said, "I want to make sure we do all we can to bring our Sailors home safe."