The Allied Quality Assurance Publications — the AQAP suite — form the contractual backbone of quality management in NATO defence procurement. Governed by STANAG 4107, mandated by contracting authorities across the Alliance, and aligned to ISO 9001:2015, they set the standard against which defence suppliers are assessed. This guide explains how the system works, which publications are in force, and where the critical competence gap lies in ammunition and explosives procurement.
The Governance Architecture
Understanding the AQAP framework begins with its governance structure. Two NATO committees matter here, and they operate in separate lanes that rarely intersect — a structural tension that generates real compliance risk in ammunition procurement.
AC/327 — The LCMG
The NATO Life Cycle Management Group (LCMG), formally designated AC/327, is the body responsible for STANAG 4107 and the entire AQAP suite. AC/327 Working Group 2 develops and maintains AQAP publications, aligning them with successive editions of ISO 9001. When a contract references AQAP-2110, the intellectual ownership of that requirement sits with AC/327. AQAP compliance is ultimately a matter of quality management systems — process documentation, audit trails, measurement systems, and management review — not technical product knowledge.
AC/326 — The CASG
The NATO Conventional Ammunition Safety Group (CASG), formally designated AC/326, owns the ammunition safety standards: the STANAG 4440/4442/4657 series and the Allied Ammunition Storage and Transport Publication (AASTP) series. Where AC/327 governs how a supplier manages its quality system, AC/326 governs whether ammunition is safe to make, store, and transport. These two lanes have no bridging instrument. A GQAR operating under AC/327 frameworks is not automatically equipped to evaluate the technical safety case for a propellant formulation or a fuze design — yet in ammunition procurement contracts, the same individual may be expected to do both.
STANAG 4107 in Practice
STANAG 4107, currently at Edition 11 (15 January 2019), is the mandate. It does not itself specify technical requirements; it requires that contracting nations specify which AQAP publications apply to a given contract. In practice, AQAP-2110 Edition D is the default selection for the majority of defence production contracts. A contract that references STANAG 4107 without specifying a particular AQAP is effectively incomplete — the contracting officer must make an explicit selection from the current AQAP suite.
The Current AQAP Suite
Eight AQAPs are currently in force. Three matter for the majority of procurement practitioners.
AQAP-2110 Ed.D
The workhorse publication. AQAP-2110 covers quality management requirements for design, development, and production. It supplements ISO 9001:2015 with defence-specific clauses covering Government Furnished Property (GFP), Key Characteristics management, Configuration Management, First Article Inspection (FAI), and the Critical Safety Item (CSI) control regime. Any supplier producing defence hardware under a NATO contract will encounter AQAP-2110 as the primary contractual quality requirement. Compliance requires demonstrable ISO 9001:2015 certification plus AQAP-specific documented procedures for each of the supplement clauses.
AQAP-2070 Ed.B
The mutual assurance publication. AQAP-2070 governs the Government Quality Assurance Representative (GQAR) process — how one NATO nation provides in-country QA oversight of a supplier on behalf of another nation. When the UK purchases ammunition from a French manufacturer, a French GQAR performs surveillance at the production facility and certifies conformance on the UK’s behalf. AQAP-2070 defines the delegation protocol, the surveillance scope, and the reporting obligations. Understanding AQAP-2070 is essential for procurement teams managing cross-border supply chains, which describes virtually all NATO-standard ammunition procurement at scale.
AQAP-2131 Ed.C
The final inspection publication. AQAP-2131 applies where design authority is held by the customer and the supplier role is limited to production to specification. It is lighter than AQAP-2110 in its design and development requirements, but maintains full rigour on production quality management, inspection, and test. It is commonly applied to licensed production arrangements where a mature design is being manufactured under licence by a new supplier.
Cancelled Publications — An Important Warning
Three AQAPs are cancelled and must not be cited in current contracts: AQAP-2009, AQAP-2120, and AQAP-2130. Their presence in a draft contract or Statement of Work is a reliable indicator that the document template has not been updated since before 2015. Any contract citing cancelled AQAPs should be returned for revision before award.
The Competence Gap
The most significant systemic weakness in the AQAP framework as applied to ammunition and explosives is the competence gap — the structural mismatch between the quality management framework (AC/327) and the technical knowledge required to evaluate ammunition safety and performance (AC/326).
ISO 9001 Clause 7.2 requires that organisations “determine the necessary competence of person(s) doing work under its control that affects the quality of outputs.” This is deliberately non-prescriptive — ISO does not define competence for any sector. AQAP-2110 Ed.D inherits this requirement without amplifying it for the ammunition domain. Neither AC/327 nor AC/326 has produced a binding competence standard that specifies what a GQAR or procurement officer must know about energetics, fuze mechanisms, hazard classification, or ammunition lot testing in order to discharge QA obligations on an ammunition contract.
Three frameworks could bridge this gap in principle: the International Ammunition Technical Guidelines (IATG 01.90 Version 3, 2021) on personnel competence, the Explosives Safety Alliance (ESA) National Occupational Standards with Key Role 6 (Procurement), and ISO 9001:2015 Clause 7.2 as a vehicle for sector-specific competence definition. None is currently binding on NATO contracting authorities. ISC has published detailed analysis of this gap through its Standards and Regulation intelligence feed.
Practical Application for Procurement Teams
For procurement officers and contracting authorities working on ammunition and explosives contracts, four practical steps follow from the AQAP framework:
- Specify the correct AQAP in every contract. Do not simply reference STANAG 4107 without selecting a publication. AQAP-2110 is the default for production contracts; AQAP-2131 for final-inspection-only scope.
- Verify GQAR competence explicitly rather than assuming it. If the GQAR is being asked to assess ammunition-specific technical risks, confirm they hold relevant technical credentials (IATG training, ESA NOS certification, or equivalent).
- Do not cite cancelled AQAPs (2009, 2120, 2130). If these appear in draft procurement documentation, require correction before issue.
- Ensure First Article Inspection scope in AQAP-2110 contracts is defined in the contract Data Item Description — the AQAP does not prescribe FAI scope; that is a contracting decision that must be made explicit.
ISC provides advisory support on AQAP compliance, STANAG 4107 interpretation, and GQAR competence framework development through our Standards and Competency consulting practice. Our WOME and ammunition technical training programmes address the competence gap directly, equipping procurement teams with the technical foundation to discharge AQAP obligations effectively.