AJMedP-2 medical evacuation doctrine

What it is

What AJMedP-2 governs

AJMedP-2 is NATO's Allied Joint Medical Publication on medical evacuation (MEDEVAC): the concept, organisation and command arrangements that let NATO nations move casualties from the point of injury or illness to a medical treatment facility during Allied joint operations. It sits under STANAG 2546, the agreement through which nations commit to use it. Its stated purpose is to describe an evacuation system that lets nations "maintain their national evacuation procedures as far as possible" while making bi- or multilateral agreement, and common planning, programming and training, easier. The current edition is Edition A, Version 1, promulgated August 2018. It does not name a superseded edition of itself; Annex B instead lists the STANAGs and Allied Publications it draws on for particular chapters.

Who it addresses, and how it binds

AJMedP-2 is written for NATO force commanders and the medical staff who plan and execute an evacuation system, not for companies. Responsibility for planning and executing an effective evacuation system sits with "the Force's medical staff", working closely with nations and operational and logistics staff, and command responsibility runs through named NATO appointments: the Land, Maritime and Air Component Commanders and their Medical Directors, the Patient Evacuation Coordination Cell, and national Medical Liaison Teams. Nations are the other addressee, since the document exists to enable them to keep their own evacuation procedures. It binds through STANAG 2546, which nations ratify and can ratify with reservations. This edition carries recorded reservations from Denmark, France, the United Kingdom, Greece and the United States, several narrowing how they accept specific paragraphs - a reminder that even a ratified STANAG's provisions are not accepted identically by every nation. AJMedP-2 does not address suppliers or manufacturers as a class, and reaches one only where a nation's own arrangements, or a contract or tender built on top of them, calls for something the doctrine describes.

How the doctrine is organised

The document works through five chapters and two annexes. Chapter 1 sets out the shared MEDEVAC concept: what the term means, how it differs from Casualty Evacuation (CASEVAC) - which the document states "is not a part of medical evacuation" - and how command, coordination and communications responsibilities are distributed across the strategic, operational and tactical levels. Chapters 2 to 4 work through the same organisational questions - command and control, responsibilities, coordination - for ground evacuation by armoured and non-armoured vehicles, maritime evacuation between and from vessels, and aeromedical evacuation by rotary and fixed-wing aircraft, each with its own chain of command and coordination appointments such as the Medical Coordination Cell and the Aeromedical Evacuation Control Centre. Chapter 5 is a short chapter on special operations, noting the particular evacuation difficulties long or difficult extraction and austere or secretive locations create, and the specialised teams special operations forces are expected to have available. Annex A is a glossary of abbreviations and Annex B lists the document's references. Two technical points recur throughout: minimum ambulance equipment is set out in a separate publication, STANAG 2342 (outside our standards catalogue, named here and not linked), and evacuation platforms are expected to carry the distinctive emblem the Geneva Conventions prescribe for medical transports.

Civilian and contracted evacuation assets

AJMedP-2 mentions civilian and contracted capacity in three places, each framed as a fallback rather than a plan of first resort. It says MEDEVAC solutions "may be sourced from civilian providers to support operations for which military capabilities are not available or when their use is impractical". For strategic evacuation out of the joint operations area, it says "consideration should be made for the use of civilian charter aircraft with the caveat on their ability to fly into the operational theatre" where military means are not available. And among the coordination tasks it lists for the Medical Coordination Cell is "liaison with civilian medical agencies and organizations providing medical services and resources". The document sets no requirements for what a civilian or contracted provider has to do or hold; it only notes that this capacity exists as an option nations and commanders can draw on.

What the document does not cover

AJMedP-2 does not describe a certification, accreditation or third-party assessment scheme, and it names no body that assesses a company or a product against it. It does not identify what edition or document it supersedes. And it treats CASEVAC, the non-medically-supervised movement of casualties, as a term it deliberately excludes from medical evacuation planning rather than a lesser form of it.

Standards it references

• ALP-4.2Background
• AJMedP-5Background
• AJMedP-7Background
• STANAG 3204Background
• AMedP-1.10Background
• STANAG 2231Background
• STANAG 2087Background
• AAMedP-1.5Background
• STANAG 2228Background
• STANAG 2292Background
• AJP-4.11Background
• STANAG 2490Background
• AJP-3Background
• STANAG 2523Background
• AJP-3.5Background
• STANAG 2528Background
• AJP-3.14Background
• STANAG 2560Background
• AMedP-1.6Background
• AMedP-1.7Background
• AMedP-1.8Background
• STANAG 2562Background
• STANAG 2563Background
• AJMedP-6Background
• AAMedP-1.1Background