Military Standards
Military contractors, educational institutions, and other governmental agencies & organizations in the United States must often purchase products that meet standardization objectives set by the U.S. Department of Defense known as the United States's Military Test Specifications.
These standards are often referred to at MIL-STD, or informally as, Milspecs.
Defense standards resulted from the need for proper performance, maintenance, and repairs.
Testing to these standards ensures interoperability — the ability for military equipment and groups to operate in conjunction with each other. This ensures products meet certain requirements of commonality, reliability, total cost of ownership, compatability with logistics systems, and other defense-related objectives.
Learn more about the various military standards and our get to know our broad portfolio of military grade products below.
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Definitions for Military Standards
This is a non-exhaustive list of definitions from documents available by the U.S. Department of Defense.
| Acronym | Military Standard | Definition |
|---|---|---|
| MIL-SPEC | Defense Specification | Describes the essential technical requirements for purchased material that is military unique or substantially modified commercial items. MIL-STD-961 covers the content and format for defense specifications. |
| MIL-STD | Defense Standard | Establishes uniform engineering and technical requirements for military-unique or substantially modified commercial processes, procedures, practices, and methods. There are five types of defense standards: interface standards, design criteria standards, manufacturing process standards, standard practices, and test method standards. MIL-STD-962 covers the content and format for defense standards. |
| MIL-PRF | Performance Specification | States requirements in terms of the required results with criteria for verifying compliance, but without stating the methods for achieving the required results. A performance specification defines the functional requirements for the item, the environment in which it must operate, and interface and interchangeability characteristics. |
| MIL-DTL | Detail Specification | Specifies design requirements, such as materials to be used, how a requirement is to be achieved, or how an item is to be fabricated or constructed. A specification that contains both performance and detail requirements is still considered a detail specification. |
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