Paul Koks (2025 Fellow)

Paul Koks holds a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Applied Sciences Haarlem. He completed his thesis in the field of low speed aerodynamics on the Grob G-109B and specialized in aircraft structural engineering before graduating in June 1985.

After fulfilling his military service in the Royal Netherlands Army Engineers Corps he joined NLR in 1986 as a flight test instrumentation engineer at the Flight Test and Certification Department. He participated in NLR’s operational flight test instrumentation team for the certification of the Fokker 50, Fokker 100 and later on the Fokker 60 aircraft. He was promoted to instrumentation project leader for the Fokker 70 certification programme and at the same time started his FTE career.

From 1997, during the modification and transformation of the F-16 MLU aircraft J-066 into an instrumented but fully operational test aircraft, he was responsible for the mechanical design and installation and integration of the F-16 MLU flight test instrumentation suite. From 1999 onwards he holds the position of NLR project manager for the follow-on support of the J-066 ‘Orange Jumper’ test aircraft. During this time he supported a wide range of flight test programmes for the RNLAF and MNFP partners. From integrating and certifying new systems, configurations, weapons and mission functionality as well as performing Early Operational Assessment (EOA), DT&E and OT&E programmes.

Later on he became involved and participated in several civil (EASA/FAA) and military airworthiness certification and flight test projects as a Subject Matter Expert (SME) or Compliance Verification Engineer (CVE). Example projects are avionics and aircraft system update programmes and research projects for fixed wing aircraft as well as avionics update projects and mission system evaluation projects for rotorcraft.

From 2013 onwards he was Senior R&D Engineer for the Flight Test and Certification Department. He is part of the department staff and from 2013 made responsible for the department's activities in the field of Flight Testing and Certification (deputy). In 2012 through 2014 he contributed to and is part of the establishment of an approved Design Organisation for NLR’s research aircraft (RADO). In the RADO he started as a Design and Certification Engineer (DCE) involved in major modification projects for NLR’s research aircraft such as the integration of a forward looking LIDAR to investigate the phenomena of Clear Air Turbulence (CAT). Between 2016 and April 2020 he was head of the section Flight Test Support. In July 2020 his nomination was approved by the authorities and he was promoted to become the head of NLR’s Design Organization (HoDO).

Since April 2020 he is promoted to head of the Flight Test and Certification (ASTC) department being part of NLR’s Aerospace Systems division.

In May 2020 he was asked to join the NATO Systems Concepts and Integration (SCI) Panel in the position of National Panel Member on behalf of NLR The Netherlands.

In his professional life Paul was and is project manager for several complex, multidisciplinary and larger programmes in the field of aerospace and systems engineering, flight test and certification support for both civil and military (international) customers. He is motivated and committed to stimulate the project teams to obtain the optimal results within the project constraints.

Paul is enjoying family life with his partner Ilona.

He presented papers in the field of flight test instrumentation and flight testing & certification at symposia of the Society of Flight Test Engineers - European Chapter (SFTE EC) in 2000, 2006, 2010, 2011 and 2017. Via the position as Director at Large and Vice President he was re-elected in 2023 to join the board of the SFTE EC in the position of President. From 2010 onwards he is a reviewer for the AIAA Journal of Aircraft in the field of flight test instrumentation and flight testing & certification.

To demonstrate his involvement for flight testing & certification two recent achievements by his department ASTC will be shared.

1. H2020 Clean Sky 2 projects SCALAIR and NOVAIR The objective for the European research programmes is:

• SCALAIR: To demonstrate the feasibility and validate using scaled model aircraft as a step between wind tunnel test en prototype flight test thus accelerating the development of new aircraft. In SCALAIR we developed a 1:8.5 scaled A320 aircraft (Scaled Flight Demonstrator SFD), integrate an instrumentation suite and developed a Ground Control Station for BVLOS operations. After the successful completion of wind tunnel tests early 2022, in autumn 2022 19 successful mission flights were performed in Grottaglie Italy following 6 qualification test flights at Deelen AFB in the Netherlands during springtime. An impression of a mission flight can be seen here: Mission Flight Tests of Clean Aviation’s Scaled Flight Demonstrator - YouTube
  
• NOVAIR: The project continues in 2023 and 2024 testing a radical distributed electric propulsion configuration replacing the two jet engines for six electric driven propeller engines. Wind tunnel tests for this Distributed Electric Propulsion DEP SFD were performed early 2023 @ DNW wind tunnel in Marknesse (NLR).

2. PEC project As of August 2nd 2023 NLR is proud to be awarded a European patent (No. 20178184.6) for a novel approach and methodology to support PEC certification of air data systems of aircraft. This methodology was developed using the latest GNSS technology and a special designed data processing approach using NLR’s Citation research aircraft as a pacer aircraft. The solution is used to test and certify new developments of the Air Data System for the Eurofighter Typhoon programme. The methodology has been demonstrated and proven to deliver the required performance for PEC certification. This project started as a research project in 2018 and will serve customers continuing in 2023 and 2024.