STANAG 4170 qualification of explosive materials for military use

What it is

STANAG 4170 is the NATO Standardization Agreement setting out the principles and methodology by which a National Authority qualifies an explosive material - a primary, booster or high explosive, a solid gun, solid rocket or liquid propellant, or a pyrotechnic composition - as safe and suitable for consideration in an intended military role. This is Edition 3, promulgated 4 February 2008. Its promulgation letter records that the CNAD Ammunition Safety Group (AC/326) "considers this an editorial edition of the STANAG", so the ratifications and implementation details already recorded against the edition it replaced carried over unchanged.

Not just a ratification cover

Most STANAGs are short administrative documents: an aim, an interoperability requirement, and ratification machinery, with the real technical content living in the Allied Publication they cover. STANAG 4170 does more than that. Alongside the agreement itself it carries its own definitions, its own methodology clause, and two mandatory tables setting the categories of data a National Authority needs before it will qualify a material. AOP-7, the Allied Publication it points to, is not where the substance moves to instead; participating nations agree that this STANAG's own data requirements are the minimum, "supported by additional requirements described in AOP-7."

What Qualification means, and what it does not

Qualification, in this STANAG's own terms, is the National Authority's assessment of whether an explosive material has properties making it safe and suitable for its intended role. A material that passes is a Qualified Explosive Material, and the document is explicit that this is only "an intermediate risk reduction stage prior to Final (or Type) Qualification" - the separate step, covered instead by STANAG 4297 and AOP-15, of assessing the material as part of a specific munition's design. The two are not the same decision: a material can be Qualified in its own right with no immediate application in view, to sit available to weapon designers later, and Qualification under this STANAG does not by itself imply Final Qualification for any particular munition.

Qualification also attaches to the material, not to the company that makes it. Where the National Authority is satisfied, it issues a formal certificate, in the format shown at Annex B, naming the explosive, its specification, its composition and its qualified role against the National Authority that granted it. There is no scheme here for a company to be certified, and the STANAG describes none.

What a National Authority reviews

The methodology clause has a National Authority identify the composition and intended role, the characteristics relevant to that role, how the material behaves in its original state, as used, and after ageing or service degradation, its stability, its compatibility with the ammunition components it will contact, how it behaves when ignited, its sensitivity to external hazards, its mechanical behaviour and performance characteristics, and toxicity and disposal data as far as possible. Two tables set out the categories this data has to cover, at a minimum, for a given intended role, and a further table cross-refers the family of NATO explosive test STANAGs used to generate it, with AOP-7 filling any gap where no test STANAG exists. Once testing is complete, the National Authority, or an organisation it approves, produces a Qualification report comparing the new data against materials with a known, proven satisfactory history in the same role. The STANAG deliberately sets no pass/fail criteria of its own for that comparison, except where a specific test STANAG or AOP-7 states one.

When a Qualified material needs requalifying

Qualification relates to a defined specification from a particular manufacturer and manufacturing location, using a particular process. A change to the specification, the source of raw materials, the manufacturing process, the manufacturer or manufacturing location, or a loss of manufacturing know-how, means the original judgement cannot be assumed still valid, and requalification, or partial requalification, may follow. An explosive material already in service, with a history of satisfactory application and an unchanged specification, may be treated as Qualified for the same role without further testing; it is a genuinely new composition, or a change to an existing one, that puts an organisation back in front of this process.

How it binds

STANAG 4170 binds a nation once it has been ratified, recorded in the NATO Standardization Document Database. Implementation is a further, separate step: the STANAG "is implemented when a nation has issued the necessary national instructions/orders that new, modified, and in-service explosive materials shall be assessed" against these principles. For a supplier or a manufacturer, it reaches them through whatever national procurement route, contract or tender invokes that national instruction, not by existing on its own.

Standards it references

• AOP-15Background
• AOP-26Background
• AOP-48Background
• STANAG 4147Background
• STANAG 4297Background
• STANAG 4397Background
• STANAG 4443Background
• STANAG 4487Background
• STANAG 4488Background
• STANAG 4489Background
• STANAG 4490Background
• STANAG 4491Background
• STANAG 4506Background
• STANAG 4507Background
• STANAG 4515Background
• STANAG 4525Background
• STANAG 4540Background
• STANAG 4556Background
• STANAG 4581Background
• STANAG 4582Background
• STANAG 4620Background