O-010 Overview of National Policies and International Cooperations on IM

The concept of less-sensitive-but-just-as-efficient munitions (and not-more-expensive if possible) appeared in the 1980s in different countries with different names, essentially in the US as a follow-on to severe accidents in the US Navy. However, this sort of accidents had often occurred in the past without raising similar programs. What makes the difference today is a technical capability to solve the problem, although this remains a difficult challenge which may require the acceptance of tradeoffs between safety, performance and cost.

According to the relative weight attributed to these three factors, this tradeoff varies from one nation to another, and even from one service to another within the same nation (navies being in general the most concerned). In particular, safety requirements differ in their philosophies and in their degree of enforcement. However, at the same time, a desire for international cooperation exists between these countries, both for technical reasons (the difficulty and the cost of the challenge) and for military reasons (the need for interoperability within NATO and with friendly nations).

This paper describes:

• the national policies regarding IM in the main NATO nations plus Australia;
• the topics of some international cooperations relevant to the IM field.