Lieutenant Colonel Erik Simonsen

About

Erik Simonsen, representing the US Air Force, is a national security affairs fellow for 2012–2013 at the Hoover Institution.

Simonsen earned an undergraduate degree in general engineering from the US Air Force Academy and two masters’ degrees in management from the Air Force Institute of Technology and Regent University. He is a career air mobility officer with experience in air refueling, air drop, and special operations low-level II mission sets. He also served in various staff positions, including at the Tanker/Airlift Control Center and the Air Mobility Command, where he led teams to determine the infrastructure requirements for strategic basing decisions. Additionally he served as a joint officer at the United States Transportation Command, where he worked on the Quadrennial Defense Review and the Unified Command Plan. Simonsen most recently served as the commander of the Thirty-Second Air Refueling Squadron. He is a command pilot with more than four thousand hours in the C-21, C-141, and KC-10 aircraft.