Platform
Modules
By sector
By sector
By standard
Blog
News
Events
AEP-107
SAA and UAS manufacturers seeking certification, and the national certification, airworthiness and operational approval authorities that assess them
NATO certification requirements and acceptable means of compliance for sense and avoid (SAA) systems on military unmanned aircraft, and the airspace safety performance an SAA-equipped UAS must demonstrate before national authorities approve it to fly.
AEP-107, Sense and Avoid for Unmanned Aircraft Systems, is a NATO Allied Engineering Publication, Edition B Version 1, promulgated in August 2025. It sets the certification requirements and acceptable means of compliance for sense and avoid (SAA) systems fitted to military unmanned aircraft systems (UAS): the technology that lets an uncrewed military aircraft detect other aircraft and avoid them, the way a manned aircraft's crew and collision-avoidance systems do. Nations record their agreement to use it in STANAG 4811, and NATO's objective behind it is for a military UAS operated by one Alliance member to be able to fly across the border into another NATO nation's airspace with confidence comparable to manned military aircraft.
The document is performance-based rather than prescriptive: it defines what an SAA-equipped UAS has to achieve, expressed as a measurable risk ratio, rather than how to build the equipment that achieves it. It leans heavily on its own companion guidance document, AEP-107.1 (which carries the background, rationale and concepts behind the requirements, and was originally published as AEP-101 in 2018), and it draws extensively on civil aviation material from ICAO, RTCA and EUROCAE, because a military UAS fitted with SAA still has to operate safely alongside civil traffic in shared airspace.
Three metrics anchor the whole standard: a mid-air collision, a near mid-air collision (an infringement of the collision volume), and an infringement of the well clear volume, ranked Catastrophic, Hazardous and Major severity respectively. Nominal risk-ratio thresholds are set separately for encounters with transponder-equipped traffic and with non-cooperative traffic, and a second, looser set of thresholds covers off-nominal conditions such as equipment failures or a degraded command and control link. Before any of that can be demonstrated, an applicant has to characterise the airspace the UAS is designated to operate in: the traffic to be expected, representative encounter geometries, traffic densities, airspace classification, atmospheric conditions, and the UAS's own usage pattern, each one a numbered requirement in its own right.
Functionally, the SAA system has to provide traffic surveillance, alerting for remain well clear and for collision avoidance, resolution guidance, and support functions for status reporting and data recording. Alerting is split by urgency: a caution-level alert when the UA is expected to infringe the well clear volume, and a warning-level alert when it is expected to enter the collision volume. Guidance and automatic manoeuvring are mostly recommended rather than mandatory - notably, an automatic collision-avoidance function is not itself required if the applicant can demonstrate the standard's safety objectives are met without it. Installation and integration requirements cover environmental qualification, non-interference with other UAS functions, field of regard, human factors validation of the crew interface, the operator's traffic display, health and integrity monitoring, and a training module specific to the SAA system.
The document also works through right-of-way geometry in detail: which aircraft has the right of way in a head-on, overtaking, or converging encounter, and which way the UA should manoeuvre. That distinction only applies to remain-well-clear guidance - once collision avoidance is the last resort, any manoeuvre that maximises separation from the intruder may be used regardless of right of way. Terrain avoidance, where relevant, takes priority over traffic avoidance.
A separate section covers requirements unique to military systems: coping with formation flight and air-to-air refuelling without nuisance alerts, interception by friendly aircraft that deliberately switch off cooperative equipment, mission-driven ID changes and silent modes, the use of military sensors such as Link 16, IFF, IRST or ESM within the SAA function, and the added cyber exposure that comes with non-cybersafe technologies like Mode S and ADS-B.
AEP-107 names three distinct roles, and does not describe any accredited or NATO-recognised certification of a company - no organisation is "AEP-107 certified". A certification authority reviews the SAA system against the certification basis the standard provides; an airworthiness authority approves how it is installed and integrated into the UAS; and an operational approval authority decides whether the resulting UAS can actually fly the mission. That operational approval authorises an operator to carry out defined UAS operations with an SAA-equipped UAS in a designated environment, and it covers airworthiness, continued airworthiness, and flight operations together.
What these reviewers actually look at is evidence: a Failure Mode, Effects and Criticality Analysis for the SAA system and every item in it, a Monte Carlo risk-ratio simulation independently verified and validated, flight test validation of detection range and tracking accuracy, human-in-the-loop testing of the alerting and guidance interface, and, before final operational approval, an operational validation report covering a recommended minimum of 300 flight hours (AMC.2509). None of this runs to a fixed calendar; it runs against a programme's own certification and approval milestones.
SAA is scoped narrowly, by the document's own definition: it addresses only the sense and avoid of other aircraft in flight, not additional hazards such as birds, terrain, obstacles, weather, or aircraft on the ground. Ground risk from a UA crash sits outside this standard too, addressed instead by the UAS's own separate airworthiness safety case. And AEP-107 is explicit that it is not trying to replace industry or ICAO detect-and-avoid standards - RTCA, EUROCAE and ASTM prescriptive standards, and the ICAO DAA standards still under development, sit alongside it rather than being superseded by it.
AEP-107 is covered by STANAG 4811, the agreement NATO nations ratify to use it. It builds its safety assignments on top of STANAG 4671, the UAS airworthiness certification standard - both the airworthiness and the airspace safety objectives have to be satisfied together. It draws on STANREC 4685 for human systems integration guidance throughout its display, alerting and command-interface material, and on STANAG 4670 for the minimum training requirements behind its own SAA-specific training module. STANAG 4370 is named among the standards usable for environmental qualification, AOP-15 supplies the document's own definition of an "SAA system", and ATP-3.3.8.1 is cited alongside STANAG 4671 for the definition of "UA Operator". As with all NATO documents, AEP-107 is free of charge and not sold; it is retrieved from the NATO Standardization Document Database or through a national standardization authority, never from a third-party copy.
AEP-107 is an operational and technical document, not a management-system standard: it governs the design, certification, and in-service operation of a piece of equipment, and the certification decision itself sits with a national certification, airworthiness, and operational approval authority, never with a vendor. Working to it in practice is documentary as much as it is engineering work: an FMECA and its supporting failure-rate data, a documented and independently verified simulation environment, flight test and human factors test records, the operational validation report covering the required flight hours, and the SAA-specific training module records for crews and maintainers.
ComplyTrain is a place to hold and control that evidence trail - versioned documents, linked review sign-offs, and training records for the people who produce and use them - the same way it supports any other engineering procedure a contract or a certification authority demands. It does not run the risk-ratio simulation, perform the FMECA, or conduct the flight test programme: that work belongs to the applicant's engineers and to the certification, airworthiness and operational approval authorities reviewing it, and it stays theirs. Which certification basis applies to a given programme, and what tier of evidence a customer expects, is set by the contract and the customer's quality clause, not by us. If you are preparing an SAA system for certification under AEP-107, the standards explorer shows what else sits alongside it, and we are glad to talk through how you would evidence the work.
Tell us how you need to work with AEP-107 and what you need from it. We will come back to you about what ComplyTrain can do.
Thank you. Your list is on its way to your inbox, and we will come back to you on what working with these standards in ComplyTrain involves, usually within one business day.
It binds through ratification, not by existing on its own. Nations record their agreement to use it in STANAG 4811, and it becomes concrete for a specific programme when a tender or contract requires an SAA-equipped UAS to achieve a certification basis, airworthiness approval, or operational approval built on this standard.
Neither, in the sense of an accredited or NATO-awarded certificate. A national certification authority reviews the SAA system's evidence against the requirements this standard sets and grants a certification basis; separate national airworthiness and operational approval authorities approve its installation and its operational use. No organisation and no company is "AEP-107 certified".
AEP-107.1 is the earlier guidance and recommended-practice document (originally AEP-101, from 2018) that explains the background, rationale and concepts for sense and avoid. AEP-107 turns that guidance into certification requirements and acceptable means of compliance that an applicant is expected to meet.
A national operational approval authority, once the airworthiness and certification elements are in place. That authority authorises an operator to carry out defined UAS operations with the SAA-equipped UAS in a designated operational environment; the standard describes the evidence trail that authority reviews, not a self-declaration route.
Directly from NATO. It is free of charge and retrieved from the NATO Standardization Document Database or through your national standardization authority, never as a paid or third-party copy.
One system for the whole compliance programme. Start with the module you need most.
Collect information the same way every time, and decide in advance what happens next.
Know whether your controls are operating, not just whether a policy says they exist.
Turn the compliance work you already know about into a plan with owners, dependencies and dates.
Know what you can offer, and hold the evidence behind every configuration you offer it in.
Eight built-in reports across every module, scheduled, delivered, and filed where the evidence lives.
The sector news that matters to your organisation - read and rated by AI, and delivered as a scheduled digest in your own language.
AI reads the tender pack and pulls out the requirements, deadlines and rules - then helps you draft the response from your own approved content, with you reviewing every step.
One current register of the suppliers and partners you depend on - each risk-assessed, re-assessing itself on schedule, and wired straight into your risk register.
See every requirement you face - across every standard, plus your own contracts and policies - traced to the documents, evidence and processes that satisfy it.
Identify, score, treat and review your risks in one place - with AI to help anyone run a proper assessment, and a defensible trail behind every decision.
Assign training, prove it was understood, and hold the competence records an auditor asks for.
Draft compliance documents with AI, keep every version under control, and export them beautifully branded - all in one place.
Audits, corrective actions, processes and approvals in one quality system, organised around ISO 9001.
Medical device manufacturers operate under more regulatory pressure than almost any other sector outside pharmaceuticals. The rules govern how you design a device, how you make it, how you track it after it ships, and how you respond when something goes wrong.
Learn how EU dual-use export controls apply to encryption, sensors, and software, how classification works under Annex I, and why sending source code by email can count as an export.
A practical way to turn in-your-head risk management into a register that survives staff turnover and answers the risk questions now showing up in tenders.