Dr. Ward was an Air Force Test Pilot, the Commandant of the Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards AFB, and is Professor Emeritus in Aerospace Engineering at TAMU. He is author the definitive text book on Flight Testing and was the Director of the TAMU Flight Mechanics Laboratory when he was on the faculty of TAMU. Dr. Ward has over 5600 hours in 75 different aircraft and is the teacher of how to conduct a flight test.

Specifically, Dr. Ward has more than 40 years of experience in the evaluation and flight testing of control and guidance algorithms for flight vehicles, as a test pilot, fighter pilot, flight test engineer, flight test director, and professor. Most importantly to the current program, Dr. Ward has significant operational experience piloting fighter aircraft during probe and drogue aerial refueling. As an experimental test pilot for the United States Air Force from 1966-1981, his engineering management and technical assignments included Commander, 4950th Test Wing (1979-1981), Commandant of the USAF Test Pilot School (1978-1979), Director of Test, Air Force Systems Command (1976-1977), Director of the F-15 Test Force (1975-1976), Special Assistant to Deputy for Engineering, Air Force Flight Test Center (1975), Instructor at the Aerospace Research Pilot School (1969-1971), and Student Empire Test Pilots' School, Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough, England (1966). Dr. Ward's research interests include flight test technologies, flight simulation and associated flight control and dynamics issues, and aircraft stability and control particularly nonlinear dynamics and control at high angles of attack. Dr. Ward earned the Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from Mississippi State University (1974), an M.S. in Astronautics from the Air Force Institute of Technology (1965), and a B.S. in Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin (1958).