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STANAG 7170
National defence authorities and NATO bodies implementing NATO Additional Military Layers geospatial data products, and the suppliers whose contracts require producing or exchanging them
STANAG 7170 is NATO's agreement to implement AGeoP-19, the framework for Additional Military Layers, NATO's digital geospatial data products for non-navigational hydrographic, oceanographic and meteorological information.
STANAG 7170 is the NATO standardization agreement by which participating nations commit to implement AGeoP-19, Edition B, NATO's framework for Additional Military Layers (AML): a family of digital geospatial data products for non-navigational maritime defence use. The STANAG itself sets no data specifications; the AML concept and the framework for AML Product Specifications sit in AGeoP-19, and individual Product Specifications exist as separate artefacts referenced from that framework. This is edition 4, promulgated 22 February 2022, and it supersedes STANAG 7170 Edition 3 of 25 September 2015.
The document's own stated aim is to define geospatial data products for the publication and exchange of hydrographic information beyond that needed solely for maritime navigation, plus oceanographic climatological information and meteorological climatological information. AML is defined in the document as "a unified range of digital geospatial data products designed to satisfy the totality of NATO non-navigational maritime defence requirements", intended to support "operating off the same map" as set out in NATO Geospatial Policy MC 0296/2. Nations that ratify the STANAG agree "to implement the following standard": AGeoP-19, Edition B. The STANAG's own content is a short cover: an aim, an agreement to implement AGeoP-19, and the administrative mechanics of ratification, implementation and review. Every testable requirement, the actual data product definitions, sits in AGeoP-19 and the Product Specifications issued from it.
The cover is explicit that this edition addresses the existing AML specifications only: "STANAG 7170 meets this requirement for existing Additional Military Layers (AML) specifications, however the civilian International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) community is moving towards a more contemporary and flexible environment using the S-100 standard." A separate agreement, STANAG 6503, provides the framework, through the Defence Maritime Geospatial Exchange Model, for a newer AML+ (S100) family of Product Specifications used across WECDIS and command and control environments, and NATO is developing the NGIF alongside it within which AML+ products will also exist. A reader looking for the S-100-based product line is reading the wrong cover; that content sits under STANAG 6503, not here.
A STANAG binds a nation, not a supplier, and it binds through ratification rather than by existing. Nations are invited to examine their own ratification and advise NATO's Standardization Office of their intention, and once a nation has implemented the agreement it reports that fact through the NSDD's electronic reporting tool. The document's effective-date clause is unconditional rather than calendar-bound: it is effective upon receipt for use by the participating nations and NATO bodies, with no fixed date by which every nation must comply, so each ratifying nation's own timeline governs. A supplier meets STANAG 7170 and AGeoP-19 only when a contract or tender says so; the STANAG is silent on industry entirely. It is supervised, per the document, under NATO's Military Committee Joint Standardisation Bureau and its Joint Geospatial Standards Working Group.
A nation is treated as having implemented the STANAG once it has issued instructions to identify its AML products in accordance with the AML Implementation Guidance Document, Edition 1 of March 2018, including the descriptions and specifications this agreement lays down. That is where the practical work lands: not a one-time technical change, but identifying and describing an organisation's own AML products against the current guidance and specification.
The STANAG is reviewed in accordance with AAP-03, NATO's own standardization procedures, and the result of that review is recorded in the NSDD. It is a NATO non-classified document, free of charge and not sold by NATO or by us; the current edition, and any newer one, is listed in the NATO Standardization Document Database.
The cover names several other documents rather than requiring them as a precondition: STANAG 1116 and its Allied Publication AMP-11, covering naval mine warfare information and data transfer; STANAG 4564 and its Allied Publication ANP-4564, covering warship electronic chart display and information systems; and STANAG 2019 and its Allied Publication APP-06, covering NATO joint military symbology. It also names NATO Geospatial Policy MC 0296/2, the civil International Hydrographic Organization's S-57 transfer standard, S-100 universal data model and S-52 chart-content specification, the SOLAS 1974 convention as amended, the NATO AML Handbook, and the AML Implementation Guidance Document. None of these is a precondition the document states must be met first - they are named as related material.
STANAG 7170 names no certification, audit or inspection regime, no threshold or numeric requirement, and no obligation addressed directly to a supplier or manufacturer. It does not itself define the AML data product formats or content rules; that detail is in AGeoP-19. And it does not cover the newer AML+ (S-100) product line, which is STANAG 6503's territory.
Meeting STANAG 7170 is operational and technical work, not a management-system exercise, and most of it happens in how an organisation specifies, produces and documents its geospatial data products, not inside a compliance tool. What can be evidenced and controlled: the internal procedure naming which AML specification and edition of AGeoP-19 a programme is building or supplying against, the record showing an organisation's AML products were identified and described against the AML Implementation Guidance Document, and the document trail showing a contract's geospatial data requirement was tracked from tender through delivery and review.
ComplyTrain holds those procedures, records and the audit trail in one controlled, versioned place, so they can be produced when a customer or a national authority asks for them.
What ComplyTrain does not do: it does not produce, validate or convert geospatial data products itself, and it does not test whether a data product conforms to AGeoP-19's technical specifications. That is data engineering and geospatial systems work, carried out in the systems that build and handle the data.
The applicable tier, and whatever else a contract requires alongside it, is set by the contract and the customer's quality clause, not by this page. Use the standards explorer to see what sits alongside STANAG 7170 and AGeoP-19, or talk to us about how we help you evidence the processes behind it.
Tell us how you need to work with STANAG 7170 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.
It binds nations that ratify it, not suppliers directly. A supplier meets it when a contract or tender invokes STANAG 7170 or the AGeoP-19 standard it covers; outside a contract, it imposes nothing on industry.
STANAG 7170 is the agreement: a short cover document by which nations commit to implement a standard. AGeoP-19 is the technical content, NATO's framework for Additional Military Layers digital geospatial data products. STANAG 7170 currently points at AGeoP-19, Edition B.
AML is the existing family of digital geospatial data products this STANAG covers. AML+ (S100) is a newer family, built around the civil S-100 data model, covered separately by STANAG 6503's Defence Maritime Geospatial Exchange Model. The document notes that the civilian hydrographic community is moving towards S-100 and that NATO is developing the AML+ line alongside the existing AML specifications this STANAG addresses.
Edition 4, promulgated 22 February 2022, supersedes Edition 3 of 25 September 2015. The document does not itself describe what changed between the two editions.
No such certification exists. The document names no accredited body, notified body or scheme for certifying an organisation or product against it; it describes only a national ratification, implementation and review cycle recorded in NATO's Standardization Document Database.
It is published free of charge by NATO through the Standardization Document Database, and is not sold by NATO or by us.
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