AAMedP-1.8 aircrew CBRN equipment training

What it is

AAMedP-1.8 is the NATO Allied Medical Publication that sets the training nations give aircrew who are issued aircrew CBRN protective assemblies. Aircrew "who are to wear and use aircrew CBRN assemblies must receive appropriate training" (clause 1.1): an initial course "when the aircrew CBRN assemblies are issued and fitted to the aircrew", and continuation training repeated at appropriate intervals after that. The detailed content lives in Annex A's outline syllabus, which both courses follow.

What the syllabus covers

Clause 1.1 sets six course objectives at subject level: understanding the CBRN threat and the need for personal protection and collective protection (COLPRO); familiarity with the national assembly, its fitting, care and performance; the assembly's operational use in routine, emergency and escape conditions; familiarity with the national COLPRO philosophy and facilities; the national ground operating procedures that go with the assembly; and familiarity with ground crew CBRN ensembles. Annex A works through the same ground in more detail: the CBRN threat to air operations (A.2), the assembly itself and the protection it provides (A.3), its use in flight including emergency and escape drills (A.4), and ground operating procedures around national collective protection facilities, including practised donning, doffing and decontamination drills (A.5).

Training emphasis (clause 1.2) sits on the chemical warfare threat to air operations, though the same equipment and procedures are noted to also protect against biological agents and against the hazards of particulate matter from a nuclear weapon. Where peacetime flight-safety rules make flying in the assembly impractical, clause 1.3 allows flight simulator training as an alternative a nation may choose.

A national standard, not a supplier obligation

AAMedP-1.8 binds through STANAG 3497, the NATO agreement nations ratify. It reaches an organisation only where a nation has adopted the standard and actually issued the assembly to its aircrew, not by a supplier's own choice. The national reservations recorded at promulgation make the point directly: Portugal's notes the standard "will be implemented upon the acquisition of CBRN aircrew specific assembly/equipment", and Slovenia records the same condition, while Bulgaria limits implementation to declared units only. Implementation also varies in substance: the USA records that it "does not necessarily train its aircrew in COLPRO procedures in accordance with paras 1.1.2(a), (d) & (e), and A.5(a), (b), & (d)". The document names no supplier, manufacturer or commercial role; it addresses a national air force and its own training establishment.

Certification means an individual record, not a scheme

Clause 1.4, "Certification of Training", is easy to misread. Read against the clause itself, it says only that aircrew issued the assembly "are to receive initial and continuation CBRN protection training defined in the outline syllabus at Annex A": a training completion record for an individual aircrew member, kept by the national training establishment. No accredited body, notified body, government surveillance or self-declaration mechanism appears anywhere in the document.

Where it fits alongside other NATO publications

For interoperability, Annex A.5 directs the ground-operating-procedures part of the syllabus to incorporate procedures from STANAG 2515, Collective Protection in a Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Environment (COLPRO), and ATP-70, including "the usual layout used for a CCA inside NATO COLPRO facilities as well as familiarization with aircrew CCA procedures and aircrew CCA pictograms". STANAG 3497 is the wider agreement that covers AAMedP-1.8 itself.

Standards it references

• STANAG 2515Binds
• ATP-70Background