What is Army Equipment Support Publications (AESP)?
Army Equipment Support Publications (AESP) provide user/operator, maintenance, repair, installation and cataloguing information on a vast range of Army equipment but excludes aircraft.
AESP Structuring Referencing and Indexing
Information Categories
AESPs use eight categories of information commonly known as the Octad. The combination of categories and levels permits a logical presentation of information for the planning staff, user/operator and repair authority for any item from a complex system to a very simple equipment.
| Category 1 | Purpose and Planning Information, Equipment Support Policy Directive. This category is divided into two sub-categories and contain the information required by operational and planning staffs to assess the suitability of material for use in a particular environment and or situation. |
| Category 2 | Operating Information, Aide Memoire and Training Aids. This category is divided into three sub-categories, shall contain the information required by personnel to enable them to operate a system or item including instructions for setting up operating, making user adjustments, emergency procedures, functional tests and remedial actions |
| Category 3 | Technical Description Describes the technical principles of design and operation and functioning and inter-relation of the various parts of the system. |
| Category 4 | Initial Installation and preparation for Special Environments. This category is divided into two sub-categories and contain the information required for the installation of the system/material. |
| Category 5 | Maintenance Information and Instructions. Contains information required for fault diagnosis, repair and calibration of the equipments/systems |
| Category 6 | Maintenance Schedules Contains concise statements of the work to be done on material at stated interval of time. |
| Category 7 | Illustrated Parts Catalogues, Commercial Parts List and Complete Equipment Schedules. Lists and illustrates items of material and designed as an aide to the identification of parts of the equipment. |
| Category 8 | Modification Instructions, General Instructions and Service Engineering Modification Instruction (RAF only). This category is divided into three sub-categories and shall contain all the detailed information required by all maintenance levels to comply with a modification instruction. |
Information Levels
Information Levels are used to avoid any misunderstandings or ambiguities with "repair level" terms. It ensures that an author knows to home to write and the recipient is told what is relevant. AESPs define 4 levels.
| Level 1 | User/operator requirements |
| Level 2 | Unit maintenance |
| Level 3 | Field maintenance |
| Level 4 | Base maintenance |
Combinations of Information
AESPs allow all categories and sub-categories to be combined.