STANAG 4599 weapon launched grenade design safety requirements

What it is

STANAG 4599 is a NATO Standardization Agreement, currently Edition 1, promulgated on 13 March 2007. It sets design safety requirements for weapon launched grenade systems and defines the standard tests that support evaluating their safety and suitability for service. Most STANAGs only ratify a separate Allied Publication and leave the technical content there; this one is different. It carries the design safety requirements and the assessment and test procedures directly in its own annexes, Annex A for design safety requirements, Annex B for assessments and Annex C for tests, so participating nations are agreeing to comply with what is in this document itself rather than in a publication it points to elsewhere.

What the agreement covers

In its own agreement clause, participating nations agree to comply with the design safety requirements and the safety and suitability for service evaluation procedures the STANAG sets out. A nation carrying out an evaluation of a grenade or launcher system also agrees to make its test parameters, safety analyses and trial reports available to other NATO nations that are considering buying or taking over that system, on receipt of a valid request, and to share the results of the design assessment and the safety and suitability for service evaluation in the same way. The subject is a weapon launched grenade: a fuzed munition with its own integral cartridge, fired from a launching device other than a service rifle, whether a hand-held low velocity launcher or an automatic grenade launcher.

Where this STANAG's scope stops

The document draws its own line here, and it is worth stating precisely because the distinction is not simply which launcher is used. A grenade projected using the energy of a service rifle's own cartridge is a rifle launched grenade, and it is addressed by a different STANAG, 4520. A grenade with its own integral cartridge is a weapon launched grenade under this STANAG, and that includes one fired from a launching device attached to a rifle, such as an under-barrel launcher, not only one fired from a stand-alone launcher.

Ratification and what counts as implemented

A STANAG binds a nation, not a company, once that nation ratifies it. This document is explicit about what counts as implementation: a nation has implemented STANAG 4599 once it has issued instructions to its services that all new weapon launched grenades procured for Service use will be designed, assessed and tested in accordance with the requirements and procedures it details. None of that reaches a supplier directly. It reaches a supplier once a national procurement authority puts design and qualification against this STANAG into a tender or a contract, which is the point where an agreement between nations becomes something a programme has to design to.

Design safety assessment and the test programme

The grenade is assessed against the whole-system design safety requirements in Annex A, amplified by the developing nation where needed, using a hazard analysis conducted under AOP-15. Annex A sets those requirements at the level of categories rather than numeric values: the strength of the design under launch stresses, safe operation across the specified environments, compatibility between the materials used and the explosive content, protection against a single point of failure, in-flight stability, the launcher attachment, noise and blast, the feed and unloading mechanisms, and the firing mechanism, including the safety of any electro-explosive device and the fuze. The safety and suitability for service test programme is built from that design safety assessment, the hazard analysis and the environmental profile the grenade is expected to see across its life, packaged and unpackaged. Annex C groups its tests into environmental functioning and durability tests and safety tests and analyses, and names them individually: transportation and handling tests such as logistic and tactical vibration and shock; climatic tests such as temperature cycling, rain, salt fog, dust and sand, sealing and fluid contamination; free fall drop, underwater shock, parachute delivery and safety drop; reaction tests such as liquid fuel fire, slow heating, bullet and fragment attack and sympathetic reaction; fuze safety tests; electrical, electromagnetic, lightning and nuclear hardening tests; and range and functioning tests covering noise and blast overpressure, accuracy and initial functioning. Annex B adds a critical examination of components after environmental stressing and firing, and a range safety assessment. Severities are not to fall below what Annex C sets, though a nation may test more severely, and the hazard analysis behind the programme has to be broad enough to also support an Insensitive Munitions assessment under STANAG 4439 and AOP-39. The document separately distinguishes development testing, which may use a non-representative build of the grenade, from the safety and suitability for service tests, where the article under test has to be fully representative of the production build standard.

How you are evaluated

There is no certification an organisation can hold under this STANAG. Each participating nation's own national or service safety evaluation organisation is responsible for evaluating the design safety and the safety and suitability for service of the weapon launched grenades used by its own Services, working from a data package the developing nation compiles documenting the test methods, the rationale for the programme and the detailed results. The only accreditation the document names attaches to the test houses, ranges and authorities that produce that evidence, not to a supplier company or to the grenade as a certified product, and results are shared between NATO nations on a valid request rather than published against a fixed audit cycle.

Standards this STANAG relies on

The design safety assessment and test programme lean on a set of other NATO documents: AOP-15 for the hazard analysis and environmental life cycle method; STANAG 4170 for qualifying the explosives used; STANAG 4147 for material compatibility; STANAG 4439 and AOP-39 for insensitive munitions assessment; STANAG 4187 for the fuze's own design safety requirements; and STANAG 4157 with AOP-20 for fuze safety testing. Individual Annex C tests are tied to their own procedure standards: STANAG 4396 for sympathetic reaction, STANAG 4241 for bullet and fragment attack (alongside STANAG 4496, cited in this edition as not yet available), STANAG 4382 for slow heating and STANAG 4240 for liquid fuel fire, plus STANAG 4560 for electro-explosive device characterization and STANAG 4315 for whole life assessment, both cited in this edition as still being drafted. The wider environmental test methods come from AECTP-100, AECTP-300 and AECTP-400, with AECTP-500 named as related reading rather than invoked directly. AEP-22 and STANAG 4145 are named together only to define the effects considered in the nuclear hardening test. A further set of NATO environmental and munitions test-method standards appears in the document's own front matter as related reading, outside what is linked here.

Standards it references

• AECTP-100Binds
• AECTP-300Binds
• AECTP-400Binds
• AOP-15Binds
• AOP-20Binds
• STANAG 4170Binds
• STANAG 4147Binds
• STANAG 4187Binds
• STANAG 4157Binds
• STANAG 4240Binds
• STANAG 4382Binds
• STANAG 4241Binds
• STANAG 4396Binds
• AECTP-500Background
• AEP-04Background
• AEP-22Background
• AOP-39Background
• STANAG 4315Background
• STANAG 4439Background
• STANAG 4560Background
• STANAG 4375Background
• STANAG 4496Background
• STANAG 4145Background