2007/2008 SETP LEGAL OFFICER
DAN WELLS (M)
DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY

Chief Warrant Officer Five Dan Wells graduated from U.S. Army Rotary Wing Flight Training in 1984. His first two assignments were flying AH-1 Cobras, serving in West Germany and Fort Ord, Ca. After a fixed-wing multi-engine qualification course in 1990, he flew the OV-1D Mohawk, again in Germany, monitoring the Soviet Union’s military presence in eastern Germany. He attended the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School, class 106, in 1994 where he was selected to be among the first four students ever to do their DT-II in Russia, flying the Mi-26. He then served at the U.S. Army Aviation Technical Test Center at Fort Rucker AL flying the CH-47, AH-1 and UH-60 on a variety of flight tests including FADEC testing, control law development and IFR certification of avionics upgrades. He participated as a project pilot on numerous flight control research experiments at NASA Ames research facility. CW5 Wells returned to the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School in 1998 where he taught for the next six years, winning Instructor of the Year honors for 2002. He taught subjects in all three curricula and developed an ADS-33-based flight test exercise for which he presented a paper at SETP’s annual symposium in 2001. After teaching at USNTPS, CW5 Wells performed flight testing on various special fixed-wing projects for a Joint Military Command. He also served in Operation Iraqi Freedom, logging over 500 hours in-theater during 2005. In June 2006, he was loaned to the 418 th Flight Test Squadron at Edwards AFB where he now serves as a CV-22 Osprey Test Pilot performing flight test on the terrain following radar, flight director system and numerous other aircraft systems. He has over 5900 hours, holds his rotary-wing and fixed-wing ATP, and has performed flight tests in rotary wing, fixed wing and tiltrotor aircraft. He has B.S. and M.S. degrees in Computer Science. CW5 Wells has presented one paper at SETP and two papers at American Helicopter Society. He served for three years on the AHS Handling Qualities Committee, performing peer review and editing of technical papers for the Journal of the American Helicopter Society. He has coached little league baseball, basketball and soccer. His strategic vision for SETP is to improve the technical merit of Society papers by requiring papers that are presented for symposium to be available for publication, and by establishing a peer review of technical papers published in non-symposium venues such as Cockpit magazine.