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STANREC 4791
A NATO acquisition or quality assurance authority choosing which counterfeit-avoidance standards to write into a defence contract
STANREC 4791 recommends AQAP-2021 and four other standards nations may use against counterfeit materiel in the defence supply chain, without obliging anyone to adopt them.
STANREC 4791 is a NATO Standardization Recommendation on avoiding counterfeit materiel in the defence supply chain. It is not itself a technical specification: it is a short list, naming standards that member and partner nations and NATO bodies are invited to use, without any obligation to ratify or implement them. That "invited" language is the whole point of a STANREC as distinct from a STANAG - a STANAG binds a nation through ratification and reaches a supplier through a contract clause; a STANREC only ever gets that far if a nation, or an acquiring authority acting for one, chooses to write the recommended standard into a tender or contract.
The current edition supersedes STANREC 4791, Edition 1, dated 31 August 2016. The document does not say what changed between the two editions.
The recommendation names five standards. Leading the list is AQAP-2021, Edition A, NATO's own Allied Quality Assurance Publication for counterfeit avoidance. Alongside it: SAE AS 5553 Rev A, on avoiding, detecting, mitigating and disposing of fraudulent or counterfeit electronic parts; IEC 62239-1:2018 Part 1, on preparing and maintaining an electronic components management plan for avionics; SAE AS6174 Rev A, on assuring the acquisition of authentic and conforming materiel; and UK DEF STAN 05-135, the UK's own standard on avoiding counterfeit materiel. A sixth document, IEC 62402:2019 on obsolescence management, is named separately as "other related" rather than recommended outright - worth noting, because it is easy to read the two lists as one.
Beyond naming these standards, STANREC 4791 also points to guidance NATO has produced for acquiring organisations: background on the risk counterfeit material poses, a worked example of counterfeit-avoidance contractual wording, guidance for running acquisition quality assurance activities against that risk, and an assessment of the standards and specifications suppliers may be referred to. That guidance, not this four-page recommendation, is where the practical detail sits.
The recommendation itself is addressed to member and partner nations and NATO bodies, who are asked to feed back to the NATO Standardization Office on how they use the standards it covers. It reaches an acquiring organisation once that organisation decides which of the five standards fits its programme, and it reaches a supplier only once one of those standards is written into a tender or a contract - STANREC 4791 creates no direct duty of its own. Review of the recommendation happens in accordance with AAP-03, with the outcome recorded in the NATO Standardization Document Database rather than communicated to any supplier.
There is no certification, audit or inspection built into STANREC 4791, and the document names none. Any assessment mechanism belongs to whichever standard a contract actually invokes - most likely AQAP-2021, which carries its own government quality assurance arrangements - not to this recommendation. A reader looking for how they are checked against STANREC 4791 itself is looking in the wrong document.
STANREC 4791 has nothing of its own to implement: the work sits in whichever of the five standards it recommends ends up on a contract, most often AQAP-2021. In practice that work looks similar whichever standard is cited: an approved-source or approved-supplier list, incoming-inspection and test records for parts flagged as suspect, a documented counterfeit-parts control procedure with a route into corrective action when a part fails authentication, and training records showing staff know what to look for. ComplyTrain gives you a controlled place to hold that documentation - procedures, inspection and test records, corrective actions and training records - and to produce the evidence trail an acquiring authority or a customer audit would ask for once a counterfeit-avoidance requirement is on contract.
What ComplyTrain does not do: it does not authenticate a physical part or run the electrical, visual or other tests the recommended standards describe, and it does not decide which of the five standards a given contract should cite.
Which of these standards actually applies to a given contract is set by the contract and the customer's quality clause, not by us. See what else sits alongside STANREC 4791 in the standards explorer, and talk to us about the evidence trail behind a counterfeit-avoidance programme.
Tell us how you need to work with STANREC 4791 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.
No. It is a Standardization Recommendation: nations and NATO bodies are invited to use the standards it lists, with no ratification step of the kind a STANAG requires. Whether any of them binds a particular supplier depends on whether an acquiring authority has written that standard into a tender or contract.
A STANAG is a formal agreement that a nation ratifies, and it binds through that ratification plus a contract clause. A STANREC, like this one, only recommends: nations are invited to use the standards it names, and there is no ratification obligation attached.
Five: AQAP-2021 Edition A, SAE AS 5553 Rev A, IEC 62239-1:2018 Part 1, SAE AS6174 Rev A, and UK DEF STAN 05-135. A sixth, IEC 62402:2019 on obsolescence management, is listed separately as "other related" rather than recommended.
No. STANREC 4791 recommends AQAP-2021, Edition A, alongside four other standards. It does not amend, supersede or stand in for AQAP-2021 itself.
Edition 2. It supersedes STANREC 4791, Edition 1, dated 31 August 2016. The document does not state what changed between the two editions.
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