Lieutenant Colonel Tyson K. Wetzel is a nonresident senior fellow in the Forward Defense practice of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. He was the 2021-22 senior US Air Force fellow at the Scowcroft Center.

Wetzel is the deputy director for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) for 7^th Air Force at Osan Air Base, Republic of Korea. He is an intelligence officer and military strategist and has deployed multiple times in support of numerous combat operations.

Wetzel previously served as the commander of the 32d Intelligence Squadron at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, where he led over four hundred airmen, guardians, and civilians from twenty-six different career fields, conducting 24/7 global reach-back and expeditionary ISR-collection operations. He has also served as the special adviser to the director for intelligence of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and as the director of operations for the 8th Intelligence Squadron at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, where he was responsible for the day-to-day operations of the $500-million Distributed Ground Station 5. Wetzel is a graduate of and former instructor at the United States Air Force Weapons School. Wetzel graduated from the University of Redlands in 2000 with a bachelor’s in international relations and entered the Air Force through Officer Training School. He earned a master of military science from the Marine Corps Command and Staff College at Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia.