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AEP-80
National military Certifying Authorities and the manufacturers seeking type certification for a rotary-wing military UAV system
AEP-80 sets NATO's design and construction airworthiness requirements for rotary-wing military UAVs (150-3,175 kg), applied by each nation's own Certifying Authority.
AEP-80 is the NATO Allied Engineering Publication that sets the technical airworthiness requirements for rotary-wing military unmanned aircraft systems, a code that calls itself USAR-RW: UAV Systems Airworthiness Requirements, Rotary Wing. It covers rotorcraft with a maximum take-off weight between 150 kg and 3,175 kg intended to operate in non-segregated airspace, and it is not a stand-alone invention: it is built by tailoring EASA CS-27 amendment 2, the civil certification specification for small rotorcraft, and supplementing it with elements of STANAG 4671 Edition 2, the airworthiness code for fixed-wing military UAV Systems. Edition B Version 1, dated November 2016, was "approved by the nations in the NNAG" (the NATO Naval Armaments Group) and supersedes Edition A.
AEP-80 does not bind a manufacturer directly, and it does not bind by simply existing. The document says it "is intended for application by Certifying Authorities within each country's relevant national regulatory framework" - meaning a national government body, not NATO and not any accredited third party, decides whether and how to use it. That national choice traces back to a NATO Standardization Agreement: "the recommendation of nations to use this publication is recorded in STANAG 4702," and a STANAG is ratified by each nation individually, sometimes with reservations recorded against it. AEP-80 reaches a manufacturer only at one remove further still, once a specific national type-certification programme for a rotary-wing military UAS adopts USAR-RW as part of its own Type Certification Basis, a document the code defines as "elaborated by the Applicant with the Certifying Authority" based on the airworthiness code.
Subparts A to G of the Airworthiness Code (Book 1) are carried across from EASA CS-27 amendment 2 almost paragraph for paragraph, covering the same ground a civil rotorcraft code covers: flight performance, structure, design and construction, powerplant, equipment, and operating limitations. Subparts H and I have no civil equivalent, because a UAV has no pilot on board. Subpart H, the command and control data link and communication system, requires an architecture with "no single failure that could lead to a Hazardous or more serious event," continuous monitoring of uplink and downlink integrity, a link-loss strategy that "shall include an autonomous reacquisition process," and a safe "switchover" procedure whenever control passes between data-link channels or control stations. Subpart I, the UAV control station, sets requirements for the ground station itself: crew workload, mandatory voice and data recorders, which flight and system data must be shown full-time versus on request, "safety critical controls" that need dedicated and hard-to-confuse actuation, and handover procedures between two control stations that "must not lead to unsafe conditions." The document is explicit that these two Subparts are "unique to STANAG 4671 and USAR-RW."
USAR-RW.1309, in Book 1's Equipment Subpart, sets the principle that runs through the whole code: "the occurrence of any Catastrophic failure condition of the rotorcraft UAV must be extremely improbable" and "the occurrence of any Hazardous failure condition of the rotorcraft UAV must be extremely remote." Book 2's Acceptable Means of Compliance (AMC) turns that into a working risk matrix: a Catastrophic failure condition is "Unacceptable" at every probability band except Extremely Improbable (10⁻⁶ per flight hour or rarer), loosening one band at a time for Hazardous, Major and Minor conditions, and a matching Design Assurance Level table runs from DAL B for software whose failure would be Catastrophic down to DAL E for software with no safety effect. The same framework covers structural fatigue (a documented fail-safe, replacement-time or fatigue-tolerance evaluation for any part "the failure of which could be catastrophic"), HIRF protection, icing qualification and fire protection, each with its own appendix or AMC test method.
Where the code discusses evaluation, it names a specific national mechanism, not a certification mark AEP-80 itself awards. A "Type Certificate" is "any document issued by a National Certifying Authority that, within the regulatory framework of that Nation, certifies compliance as determined by the National Certifying Authority with USAR-RW," and the Certifying Authority may instead issue "an alternative document to a Type Certificate (such as a Release To Service, Military Aircraft Type Qualification Certificate or Flight Permit, which may include items outside the scope of USAR-RW)." Nothing in AEP-80 describes a NATO-level scheme, an accredited body, or a self-declaration route: the assessment is a national government function, exercised entirely within that nation's own airworthiness framework, against the Type Certification Basis agreed for that specific aircraft type. Even that agreement is not permanent - "Modification and/or addition of missions may require the rotorcraft UAV to be re-certified for these missions."
The scope clause rules out a long list of areas by name: control-station security, protecting the data link "from willful interference," airspace integration and sense-and-avoid, crew competence, training and licensing, approval of operating, maintenance and design organisations, frequency spectrum allocation, noise and environmental certification, and the carriage or release of weapons. All of these are left to "other forms of approval by Certifying Authority" outside USAR-RW altogether.
AEP-80 is an operational and technical airworthiness code, not a management-system standard, so there is no software mapping to install against it. Evidencing it is engineering work: structural and fatigue substantiation, a system safety assessment run through the FHA/PSSA/SSA process Book 2 describes, HIRF and icing qualification, and the Instructions for Continued Airworthiness the code requires, all carried out by a programme's own engineering and airworthiness staff against the Type Certification Basis its Certifying Authority has agreed.
What ComplyTrain does for that kind of work generally: it holds the procedures a defence engineering organisation runs against a code like this as controlled documents, tracks the evidence a Certifying Authority representative asks to see (test reports, compliance matrices, the critical-parts list, corrective actions raised against a substantiation gap), and keeps the audit trail of who approved which version of the Type Certification Basis and when. A critical-part traceability record and a design engineer's safety-assessment training record are the kind of concrete artefacts that trail lives in.
What it does not do: it does not run the structural, fatigue, HIRF or icing tests, it does not write the system safety assessment, and it cannot make a Certifying Authority issue a Type Certificate. The applicable tier for a given programme, and the standards that travel with it, are set by the contract and the customer's quality clause. If a rotary-wing UAS programme is on the table, the standards explorer shows what else sits alongside AEP-80, and we're glad to talk through how ComplyTrain can help hold the evidence trail together.
Tell us how you need to work with AEP-80 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.
No. STANAG 4702 is the NATO Standardization Agreement nations ratify, recording their recommendation to use AEP-80; AEP-80 is the technical publication that STANAG covers and that actually contains the airworthiness requirements.
Not on its own. The document has each nation's own Certifying Authority issue the Type Certificate (or an equivalent document) once a specific aircraft design is shown to meet the agreed Type Certification Basis; there is no NATO-level or third-party AEP-80 certification.
STANAG 4671 sets airworthiness requirements for fixed-wing military UAV Systems; AEP-80 covers rotary-wing (rotorcraft) UAV Systems and is tailored from EASA CS-27 amendment 2 with elements borrowed from STANAG 4671, sharing the data-link and control-station requirements the civil code does not have.
Rotorcraft UAV Systems with a maximum take-off weight between 150 kg and 3,175 kg intended to operate in non-segregated airspace, though a Certifying Authority may apply it outside that range where it judges that appropriate.
Only through a specific national programme. AEP-80 has no force until a nation's Certifying Authority chooses to apply it under STANAG 4702, and it binds a manufacturer only once that authority writes it into a particular type-certification programme's basis.
Edition B, Version 1, effective from 24 November 2016, which superseded and required the destruction of Edition A, Version 1.
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