AASTP-05 ammunition storage, maintenance and transport guidelines

What it is

AASTP-05, NATO Guidelines for the Storage, Maintenance and Transport of Ammunition on Deployed Missions or Operations, is the Allied Ammunition Storage and Transport Publication that covers temporary, threat-environment munitions facilities. Nations' agreement to use it is recorded in STANAG 4657, and the current text, Edition B Version 1, was promulgated in July 2024. It is written for use by the Operational Commander's Explosives Safety Officer (ESO), and it sets out how a deployed force stores, looks after and moves munitions once a purpose-built, permanent depot of the kind AASTP-01 governs cannot be provided in time.

Guidelines for temporary storage, not a permanent depot standard

AASTP-05 exists specifically because AASTP-01's permanent-facility standards do not fit a deployment. Where AASTP-01 sets standards for permanent, long-term facilities, AASTP-05 sets standards for more temporary facilities that have to operate in a threat environment, so it applies once AASTP-01-suitable infrastructure cannot be built or installed in time and a field depot has to be used instead. It draws directly on AASTP-01's hazard classification and quantity-distance groundwork rather than restating it, and it points to AASTP-03 for hazard classification and to AASTP-04 for the detailed methodology behind the risk analysis it summarises for field use. The transport chapter defers in the same way to the Allied Movement Publication that now carries NATO's dangerous goods transport rules, rather than duplicating them here.

Who it is written for, and when it applies

The document's own reference point is the Operational Commander's Explosives Safety Officer, who manages the day-to-day explosives safety programme and advises the Commander on all explosives safety matters. The Operational Commander carries ultimate accountability for balancing safety against operational need, appoints the ESO, and decides deviations and risk acceptance. Where several nations share a base, the document requires them to stand up an Explosives Safety Board, chaired by a senior officer and attended by a representative from every co-located nation, to agree shared safety criteria and coordinate land use, construction and licensing decisions across the compound.

The trigger for applying AASTP-05 is the absence of a permanent facility, not a fixed date. It belongs at the planning and reconnaissance stage of a deployment, before munitions arrive, and a separate part of the document addresses the other end of a mission: when an operation concludes, the same guidelines apply again to the consolidation, storage, transport, maintenance, retrograde and disposal stages of a drawdown.

The governance a deployed compound has to run

AASTP-05 reads as much as a governance framework as a technical manual. Before a site is used, it expects a Memorandum of Understanding with the host nation or partners, an approved site plan document, an explosives licence, and a record of any approved deviations, each reviewed by the appropriate authority. Before the Operational Commander deviates from the guidelines, relevant specialists must be consulted and that advice documented; where a requirement genuinely cannot be met, a risk assessment is required and any deviation needs formal approval. NATO itself runs no explosives safety or licensing organisation: those matters are carried out at national level, which is also why destruction of munitions, for example, has to follow both AASTP-01 and the national regulations that govern the operation.

Two storage regimes, and the risk process when neither can be met

The manual sets out two different storage regimes matched to how settled a position is. A Field Distance regime covers storage expected to last through most of a deployment. A Transition Distance regime is deliberately less protective and is meant only for the short period entering or leaving a theatre: the document is explicit that storage under this regime carries an inherent risk of total loss of munitions, and that a transitional site can no longer be treated as temporary after three months of use, at which point storage has to move to the Field Distance regime or to AASTP-01's permanent-facility criteria.

Where neither regime's requirements can be met at all, a five-step risk management process runs from hazard identification through analysis, a control plan, formal approval and ongoing tracking, producing what the document calls an Explosives Safety Case, presented to the authority accepting the residual risk, most often the Operational Commander. A nation that declines to take part in that process does not avoid the outcome: NATO's own risk-decision requirements still apply, made instead by a delegated general or flag officer, with the reasons for non-participation recorded.

Closing out an operation, and how it is overseen

AASTP-05 names no certification scheme, and nothing in it describes an outside body certifying a company, a site or a nation against it. What it describes instead is command oversight: scheduled explosives safety inspections by the responsible headquarters, ongoing review by the Explosives Safety Board in a multinational setting, and, where the storage regime cannot be met, the Explosives Safety Case and risk decision an approving authority signs off on. Munitions accidents are reported through a system the national authority or organisation responsible for the munitions has to put in place, and investigations are led by someone that authority appoints. Separately, every NATO base that issues munitions to personnel has to run a Munitions Amnesty Program, intended to recover munitions that have ended up outside the normal supply chain. None of this is third-party certification or a notified-body assessment; it is internal command and national administrative control.

Standards it references

• AASTP-01Binds
• AMovP-06Binds
• AASTP-03Background
• AASTP-04Background
• ALP-16Background
• STANAG 2617Background
• STANAG 4675Background
• STANAG 1380Background
• AECP-02Background