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AJP-3.2
NATO commanders and staffs who plan and conduct land operations, and the subordinate commanders, adjacent components and civilians named alongside them
AJP-3.2 is NATO's overarching doctrine for the conduct of land operations, agreed to by nations under STANAG 2288; it guides commanders and staffs, not companies.
AJP-3.2, Allied Joint Doctrine for Land Operations, is NATO's overarching publication for the conduct of land operations. It sits under the keystone publication AJP-3, Allied Joint Doctrine for the Conduct of Operations, "to provide specific guidance for the conduct of land operations within a joint operating environment". Nations record their agreement to use it in STANAG 2288, so the document binds through that ratified agreement rather than through a contract or a law reaching into a supplier's own organization. Its purpose, in its own words, is "to provide the philosophy, principles and guidance for land operations within a joint and multinational context". The current edition is Edition B, Version 1, promulgated 3 February 2022, superseding Edition A, Version 1, which nations were told to destroy under their own local procedures.
The document names its readers directly: "AJP-3.2 is written for commander joint force command when conducting land operations, the land component commander and their staffs, subordinate commanders and adjacent components." It adds a secondary readership, weaker than that primary one: "AJP-3.2 also provides a reference for NATO civilian and non-NATO civilians operating with the land component." No supplier, manufacturer or acquirer appears anywhere in it. A nation can ratify STANAG 2288 while still recording where it departs from the doctrine, and this edition already carries four such reservations, from Canada, France, the Netherlands and the United States.
Chapter 1 sets the land operating environment: land forces operating "Among the people", the information environment and the electromagnetic and acoustic spectrum, the range of threats a land force may face, and the impact of weather and terrain. Annex A expands seven specific environments in turn: urban, wooded and forest, cold weather, desert, mountainous, jungle and riverine, each with its own employment considerations across the joint functions.
Chapter 2 covers the land component itself: fighting power, made up of a moral, a conceptual and a physical component; the roles and characteristics of land forces; the land command structure, running from Headquarters Allied Land Command through the theatre land component to the land component command; the organization of forces into combined arms groupings, with heavy, medium and light force types detailed further in Annex B; and how the land component interacts with the air, maritime, special operations, space, cyberspace and joint logistic support group.
Chapter 3 sets out the fundamentals that run through the rest of the document. The manoeuvrist approach is the land component's operating philosophy, seizing and holding the initiative and attacking an adversary's understanding, will and cohesion rather than its equipment alone. Mission command is NATO's command philosophy, built on a commander's clearly expressed intent and a subordinate's freedom to act on it. Joint action then works through the joint functions: command and control, intelligence, manoeuvre, fires, information, civil-military cooperation, sustainment and force protection. The document describes land tactical operations and activities, the orchestration of operations through operational art, and the operations, functional and geographic frameworks used to visualize how an operation fits together.
AJP-3.2 says little about anything outside NATO's own chain of command, and what it does say is narrow. On personnel, it states that the physical component's "right mix of personnel might include military, civilians, contractors, and other agencies or actors", and that including non-uniformed personnel "may have certain legal and policy implications" a commander is told to raise with their legal advisor. On sustainment, it describes the function as covering "personnel, logistics, medical, military engineering, finance and contract support", and it describes the joint logistic support group's capabilities as drawn from "those that are detached by troop-contributing nations or that which can be contracted by the JLSG", delivering support "by using assigned national, host nation or commercial resources". Nothing beyond this appears in the document about a company's role.
None. AJP-3.2 names no certification body, no government quality-assurance surveillance, no notified body, no self-declaration route and no customer audit. The nearest thing it carries to an evaluation mechanism is the national reservation recorded against a ratified STANAG, which is a diplomatic and military process between NATO and its member nations, not an assessment of a company or a product.
AJP-3.2 binds NATO commanders and staffs, not companies, and it describes no scheme a business is certified or assessed against. The narrow places where it touches contracted or commercial work are the ones it names itself: a personnel mix that "might include military, civilians, contractors, and other agencies or actors", carrying "legal and policy implications" a commander takes to their legal advisor, and a joint logistic support group whose capabilities can be "contracted" or drawn from "commercial resources" alongside national and host-nation support. For an organization working as one of those contracted or commercial elements, ComplyTrain gives you a place to hold the procedures, training records and evidence trail that kind of engagement, and any legal or policy review of it, would ask for - version-controlled, and ready to show a customer or a legal reviewer.
ComplyTrain does not plan or conduct land operations, does not give the legal advice AJP-3.2 says a commander should seek before employing non-uniformed personnel, and does not stand in for the NATO chain of command the document describes. That happens in the chain of command, not in software.
Which doctrine and which standards actually apply to a given contract is set by the contract and the customer's quality clause, not by this page. See the standards explorer for what sits alongside AJP-3.2, and talk to us about the evidence trail behind it.
Tell us how you need to work with AJP-3.2 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. AJP-3.2 binds nations, which record their agreement to use it by ratifying STANAG 2288, and a nation can ratify with reservations. A company meets it only indirectly, where a national arrangement or a contract built on top of one requires something of it.
The land operating environment, the fighting power and command structure of land forces, and the fundamentals of the manoeuvrist approach, mission command and the joint functions. Two annexes add employment considerations for seven specific environments and the characteristics of heavy, medium and light forces.
No. AJP-3.2 names no certification body, notified body or accredited scheme of any kind. It is philosophy, principles and guidance for a NATO military chain of command, not a standard a company or product is assessed against.
AJP-3.2 is the overarching, operational-level doctrine for land operations. ATP-3.2.1, Conduct of Land Tactical Operations, and ATP-3.2.1.1, Conduct of Land Tactical Activities, give the tactical-level detail for planning and executing those operations and were revised alongside this edition to stay consistent with it.
Edition B, Version 1, promulgated 3 February 2022. It superseded Edition A, Version 1, which nations were told to destroy under their own local document-destruction procedures once the new edition took effect.
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