AASTP (Allied Ammunition Storage and Transport Publications)

AASTP stands for Allied Ammunition Storage and Transport Publication. NATO's acronym glossary lists it under that name, and it refers to a series of publications that set out allied guidance and standards for keeping military ammunition and explosives safe. The series covers storage, transport, maintenance and operational handling. The glossary entry is in AAP-15, the Glossary of NATO Acronyms and Abbreviations.

AASTP is not a single document. It is a numbered family, with each part addressing a different safety question: where and how ammunition is stored, how it moves, how it is classified by hazard, how explosion risk is analysed, and how it is managed on deployed operations. Together the parts form part of NATO's wider ammunition-safety and explosives-safety standardization framework.

The five AASTP parts and what each covers

• AASTP-1 gives NATO guidance for the storage of military ammunition and explosives, including quantity-distance principles. NATO's Munitions Safety Information Analysis Center (MSIAC) covers the latest edition in its notice on the promulgation of AASTP-1 Edition C.
• AASTP-2 concerns the transport of military ammunition and explosives. NATO links it to dangerous-goods transport safety in its article Safeguarding the transport of dangerous goods.
• AASTP-3 deals with ammunition hazard classification.
• AASTP-4 addresses explosives-safety risk analysis and the engineering models used to estimate explosion effects, damage and injury.
• AASTP-5 sets NATO guidelines for the storage, maintenance and transport of ammunition on deployed missions and operations. MSIAC describes it in its paper on implementing NATO guidelines in multi-national operations.

Home-country storage versus deployed operations

The split between AASTP-1 and AASTP-5 is the most practical distinction in the series. MSIAC states that AASTP-1 concerns safe storage in the home country, while AASTP-5 concerns safe storage on deployed missions. The two parts describe the same hazard under different conditions. A fixed national depot and a temporary site in an operational theatre cannot always follow the same layout rules, so NATO gives each setting its own guidance. MSIAC sets out this division, along with the roles of AASTP-3 and AASTP-4, in its summary of AC/326 and its sub-groups.

Who maintains the series and what happens when requirements cannot be met

The NATO Ammunition Safety Group, known as AC/326, develops and maintains NATO ammunition-safety standards, guidelines and related standardization agreements. The AASTP parts sit within that body of work.

Sites do not always meet every requirement in AASTP-1 or AASTP-5. In that case, MSIAC identifies the explosives-safety risk-assessment and risk-management process in ALP-16 as the applicable process. Its page on explosives safety and munitions risk management explains the approach. A supplier working on storage or transport solutions should know that a shortfall against an AASTP requirement leads to a formal risk-management route, not an informal exception.

What AASTP means for a supplier bidding on Canadian public contracts

AASTP is a NATO publication series, not a Canadian federal or provincial standard. It is relevant to NATO and allied military requirements for ammunition storage, transport and deployed operations. If you bid on work that involves military ammunition or explosives, such as storage facilities, handling equipment, packaging, transport services or site planning, read the solicitation closely for the safety publications it names. Where a tender cites an AASTP part, treat it as a stated requirement and map your proposal to that part's subject matter. Where a tender is silent, ask the contracting authority through the Q&A process which publication applies before you price. You can find the NATO terminology behind these documents in NATOTerm, NATO's database of non-classified military terminology.