STANAG 3624 nitrogen and replenishment equipment characteristics

What it is

STANAG 3624 is the NATO Standardization Agreement covering nitrogen and replenishment equipment characteristics for cross-servicing aircraft and air-launched missiles. This is Edition 7, promulgated 16 May 2019, superseding Edition 6 of 16 April 2015.

A STANAG is not the specification

A STANAG is the agreement by which NATO nations commit to implement a standard, not the technical specification itself. STANAG 3624's own text is short: an aim, two interoperability requirements, and the ratification, implementation and reporting machinery. The nitrogen quality, pressure, hose, coupling and connector figures named in its title are specified in a separate publication, AAGSP-01 Edition B, which the STANAG names as the standard participating nations agree to implement. Anyone designing, specifying or checking those nitrogen and equipment characteristics needs AAGSP-01's own text, not this cover agreement.

What it commits nations to

The stated aim is interoperability: to standardize the characteristics of gaseous and liquid nitrogen, its supply pressure, hoses, couplings and other equipment for cross-servicing aircraft and air-launched missiles, and to add mating and access clearance dimensions that widen which nations' equipment can cross-service which aircraft. The agreement itself is a naming exercise: ratifying nations agree to implement AAGSP-01, Edition B, and the technical content sits there rather than in this cover.

What implementing it means

STANAG 3624 spells out implementation in more detail than most STANAG covers. A ratifying entity is considered to have implemented AAGSP-01 once it can acquire, store and service aircraft with liquid or gaseous nitrogen at the standard's minimum characteristics, using the connections AAGSP-01 sets out at its own Annex B. That reaches both nitrogen's purchasing and production and the servicing equipment used to deliver it, and it runs for the working life of that equipment: throughout its life, the tanks and servicing equipment have to keep supplying nitrogen at the required purity and pressure. The servicing equipment itself has to stay certificated and be checked periodically, the personnel operating it have to be trained and certified, and servicing procedures have to be amended to match the standard's details.

Who it binds, and how

STANAG 3624 binds nations, not suppliers. It is effective upon receipt for use by the participating nations and NATO bodies, and it becomes binding on a given nation through ratification, which NATO records in the NATO Standardization Document Database. Implementation is a separate, further step, reported once it happens: Allies and NATO bodies are then obliged to report implementation details through NATO's electronic reporting tool, while partner nations are only invited to do the same. A supplier meets STANAG 3624, or the AAGSP-01 characteristics it covers, only where a servicing contract or tender says so - the document itself sets no obligation reaching a supplier directly, and names no NATO-wide effective date of its own (its "NATO Effective Date (NED)" field reads "Not applicable").

How it's evaluated

STANAG 3624 describes no certification scheme and no audit reaching a company. What it requires, once implemented, is that servicing equipment stay certificated and periodically checked and that operating personnel be trained and certified, but the document does not name who issues either certification - these are equipment- and personnel-level checks, not something an organisation is certified against. What it does describe clearly is nations reporting their ratification and implementation status to NATO for the record. Where a supplier's servicing work against AAGSP-01's characteristics does get checked in practice - equipment certificates, training records, periodic-check logs - the assessor and the evidence required are set by the contract's own quality clause, not by this STANAG.

Standards it references

STANAG 3624 covers AAGSP-01, the Allied Publication that carries the actual nitrogen and equipment characteristics. Its "Other Related Documents" also list STANAG 7146 and the AAGSP-10 publication it covers, the assignment of NATO code numbers to gases used in aircraft cross-servicing, which inform rather than bind through this agreement. It also names two ISO standards outside our catalogue: ISO 1023, on aircraft high-pressure air charging valves, and ISO 1101, on geometrical product specification tolerancing, tolerances of form, orientation, location and run-out.

Standards it references

• STANAG 7146Background
• AAGSP-10Background