AAP-47 NATO's directive for developing Allied joint doctrine

What it is

AAP-47 is NATO's own directive for how Allied joint doctrine gets made. Allied joint doctrine is published as Allied Joint Publications (AJPs), and AAP-47 describes how NATO develops, staffs, harmonizes, ratifies, revises and cancels them. It is not a technical requirement a company implements; it is the process description behind every AJP in the Allied Joint Doctrine Architecture (AJDA), from AJP-01, the capstone publication linking joint doctrine to Alliance strategy, down through the functional publications such as Allied Joint Doctrine for Land Operations. This is Edition C, Version 1, promulgated 19 February 2019, superseding Edition B, Version 1.

The publication names its own audience plainly: NATO member states, Allied Command Operations (ACO) and Allied Command Transformation (ACT), the International Military Staff, NATO military bodies, Military Committee standardization boards and their subordinate working groups, NATO accredited centres of excellence and education and training facilities, the NATO Standardization Office (NSO), partner nations, and AJP custodians. A supplier or contractor is never named, because none of this reaches one directly.

Who this directs, and who it does not

AAP-47 is explicit that it is "applicable to those involved in developing and contributing to Allied joint doctrine development", and every entity on its list sits inside NATO's own standardization and doctrine-writing structure, or is a member or partner nation acting through it. There is no supplier role, no acquirer role and no contract mechanism defined anywhere in the document. That is a real difference from most of the standards in this catalogue: an AQAP or a STANAG eventually reaches a company through a contract clause, but AAP-47 governs the machinery that writes NATO's own doctrine, one level removed from any commercial relationship. The doctrine that machinery produces then governs how commanders and staffs plan, execute, assess and sustain operations, not what a contractor delivers.

The three-phase doctrine development process

Allied joint doctrine moves through three phases. The review phase begins when Allied Command Transformation issues a request for feedback in line with the Allied Joint Doctrine Campaign Plan (AJDCP), and runs for roughly 210 days. ACT gathers relevant information through data fusion, convenes a data fusion workshop where needed, and drafts a doctrine task that assigns custodianship, sets the framework and timeline, standardizes the title, and fixes the AJP's number and position on the doctrine architecture. Once the Military Committee Joint Standardization Board (MCJSB) approves that doctrine task, the review phase ends and the development phase begins.

A custodian, drawn from a nation, a strategic command, a NATO accredited centre of excellence or another NATO military body, forms a writing team and has up to 180 days to produce a first study draft. Comments on each draft are logged on a standard NATO comment matrix and categorized critical, substantive or editorial, then adjudicated as accepted, accepted with amendment, withdrawn, not accepted, noted, or overtaken by events. The number of study drafts is normally restricted to two, after which a harmonization draft circulates for up to 30 days, limited strictly to harmonization comments. Once the AJOD Working Group and the MCJSB confirm the doctrine task has been met, the harmonization draft becomes the ratification draft and moves forward with its covering NATO standardization agreement (STANAG). Nations then have 180 days to respond for a new AJP, or 120 days for a revised edition, and capstone and keystone AJPs need positive ratification from every NATO member state except Iceland.

The management phase starts once the promulgation letter is issued and runs through implementation, training, exercises and validation, normally about a year after promulgation, until the next request for feedback restarts the cycle.

Levels of doctrine, and where AAP-47's remit stops

There are three levels of Allied doctrine. Level-1 comprises the capstone publication, AJP-01, and the keystone publications that establish the doctrinal foundation for the series beneath them. Level-2 publications, such as Allied Joint Doctrine for Land Operations (AJP-3.2), address specific functional areas at the operational level and carry an AJP designation. Level-3 publications hold tactics, techniques and procedures; they do not appear on the doctrine architecture, and AAP-47 says they are "not strictly within the remit of this publication", though custodians can use it as guidance. This page, like the document itself, is really about levels 1 and 2.

New doctrine, minor changes, cancellation and fast-track

A doctrine void, rather than a scheduled review, can also start the process. Any NATO or national entity can submit a doctrine proposal setting out the rationale, the outline content, and the scope and purpose, and ACT assesses it against whether the subject meets the definition of joint doctrine, whether a genuine void exists, and whether it duplicates existing doctrine. Outside that main cycle, custodians can make minor corrections through a change proposal, producing a new version rather than a new edition; an AJP can be cancelled as a data fusion outcome; a Military-Committee-authorized fast-track procedure can compress the timeline for an urgent gap; and a strategic command can issue a joint operational guideline to bridge an immediate operational need until formal doctrine catches up.

Terminology, lexicon and classification

Two requirements apply whichever route an AJP takes. Custodians must check drafts against NATOTerm and submit new or changed terminology to the NATO Terminology Office once a draft is mature enough, and every study and harmonization draft must carry a two-part lexicon (acronyms and abbreviations, then terms and definitions) with each entry annotated by source and authority; getting that wrong stops the AJP entering ratification. Classification defaults the other way: AJPs are meant to be unclassified with no classification markings unless a specific justification says otherwise. A preface is also mandatory, and must as a minimum cover scope, purpose, application and linkages, or the doctrine will not enter ratification.

How you get it

AAP-47 is published by the NATO Standardization Office and, like every NATO standardization document, it carries no charge. The Standardization Document Database is the authoritative source. We credit NATO for the catalogue and neither sell nor host a copy ourselves.

Standards it references

• AAP-03Binds
• AAP-77Background
• AJP-3.1Background
• AJP-01Background
• AJP-3.2Background
• AAP-32Background