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STANAG 4280
STANAG 4280 packaging and preservation
Suppliers who prepare, preserve and package land military equipment and materiel for a NATO armed force, and the buyers who specify how it is protected and packaged for storage and transport.
STANAG 4280 is the NATO agreement that sets standard levels of corrosion protection and packaging for land military equipment in storage and transport. NATO has not released it publicly; this page describes it from the Czech defence standard that implements it.
- Edition
- 4
- Published
- 2021-06-16
NATO has not released this STANAG publicly. It is NATO UNCLASSIFIED, and organisations that need it obtain it through their national standardization authority.
What it is
STANAG 4280 is the NATO Standardization Agreement on packaging and preservation. Edition 4, promulgated on 16 June 2021 under NATO's MC, MCLSB, CSS and SP committees, covers the publication APP-21, edition B. NATO's own STANAG 4340, the agreement on packaging test procedures, describes STANAG 4280 this way: "Ratifying nations agree to use AEPP-3 as a manual for providing guidance for the testing of packages in relation to the NATO levels of packaging in STANAG 4280."
NATO has not released STANAG 4280 or APP-21 publicly. This page describes them from a public national implementation, the Czech defence standard ČOS 999923 (2nd edition, amendment 2, effective 12 January 2023), which states that it introduces STANAG 4280 edition 4 and APP-21(B) into Czech use. A national implementation can add national requirements and reservations, so treat what follows as the Czech implementation's content, not as NATO's own text.
What the Czech implementation covers
ČOS 999923 sets out the technologies, methods and resources for protecting land military equipment and materiel against corrosion and ageing during storage, and the system for choosing among them for preparation, the preservation itself, and packaging. It groups products into eight classes by construction and material, from simple fasteners and precision-machined parts through transport vehicles, artillery, armoured and rocket technology to electronic, optical, radio and non-metallic items, and the choice of protection depends on which group a product falls into.
Protection levels, packaging levels and approved agents
The standard sets six NATO temporary protection levels, from level 1 (mechanical protection only, no climatic protection) through a preservative-coated level, a waterproof or oil-resistant cover, a strippable compound coating, and a vapour-proof cover, up to level 6, a vapour-proof cover combined with static or dynamic dehumidification. It also sets four NATO standard packaging levels, each pairing a storage duration of one to five years with a temperature and humidity range: level 1 covers outdoor storage anywhere in the world for one year at -51°C to +71°C, while level 4 covers one year in ventilated buildings in Europe. Climatic storage regions and their extreme temperatures are drawn from STANAG 4370 (AECTP-230), and corrosion aggressivity is classified in six degrees, from very low to extreme, following ČSN EN ISO 9223.
Twenty named variants of temporary protection, VZ-0 to VZ-19, cover preservative oils and greases, waxes, strippable and washable coatings, static and dynamic dehumidification in sealed enclosures, contact and vapour-phase corrosion inhibitors, inert gas or dry air in hermetic containers, and treatments for non-metallic materials. Every packaged item must carry an identification label recording its catalogue and part numbers, name, quantity, the protection variant applied, and the date and identity of who applied it. Preservation agents themselves must pass qualification testing before use: agents in the fuels-and-lubricants family are requalified every 60 months and paint products every 36 months, and an agent that repeatedly fails acceptance testing is removed from the approved list.
How we help
A supplier bound by STANAG 4280 through a contract holds the obtained text through its national authority. In ComplyTrain you record the requirements that apply to you as your own requirements, give each an owner, and keep the evidence that shows you meet them against each one.
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