Attitude
Her attitude is mostly professional and matches well with the rest of her squadron, Ben Gannon and Henry Purcell. During party scenes, she is shown to be feminine but with a certain disregard for the vapid girls that Henry appears to prefer.
Girl: I have to go pee-pee.
Otherwise, she is shown as not giving up after her plane crash and her attempts to get to South Korea.
Appearance
For the most part, her character is shown in a more feminine outfit during her non-working hours and more job-appropriate clothing during the flight scenes. After the crash, she appears to be wearing tight sweatpants during her flight along with a number of rear shots as she is climbing up rocks. This is contrast with Ben who is wearing cargo pants when he lands in Alaska.
Abilities
In the air, it is hard to determine which planes shoot down which targets, however she is not isolated as either being significantly effective or ineffective at attacks.
On the ground, Kara uses her gun twice. In both cases, they were wild shots while she was fleeing alone. In the first, she strikes an unnamed enemy in the knee and in the second, she shoots out a spotlight in a DMZ (and possibly kills someone but that isn’t shown).
She is also the only character who is shown to consider the consequences of her actions. This happens both in reporting (but not making the final decision) about blowing up a nuclear weapon but also in the longer scene as she is looking at the destruction of Henry’s crash. She also hesitates and hides her weapon when she encounters children after her own crash.
Relationships
Kara’s relationship with her companion fighter pilots is a close one that shows a friendship and a comfort with each other. There is very little to isolate either her gender or skill during the scenes.
Sexuality
In the movie, Henry is portrayed as something of a slut in picking a new woman in every port. Ben has a single girlfriend during one party scene but otherwise focuses on Kara for a romantic sub-plot.
During the entire movie, Kara remains single and without even a temporary date for any of the other scenes. She is shown to drink alone or always while focusing on Ben.
Lt. Kara Wade: Just tell me you love me, you pussy.
Between her interest in Ben, a lack of partners, and her final words, it demonstrates that her character’s fulfillment of getting the guy. Compared to the other two main characters, she remains monogamous and focused on that instead of surviving an attack by an antonymous plane, fleeing across the Korean countryside, or even the risk of ejecting from a crashing plane.
History
There is no real history of her character developed during the movie, but none of the three main characters have any back story development.