BM2 (battlefield maintenance)

BM2 is the NATO abbreviation for battlefield maintenance. The French equivalent is maintenance sur le champ de bataille. The abbreviation is recorded in NATO's Glossary of NATO Acronyms and Abbreviations (AAP-15), which gives NSDD, the NATO Standardization and Doctrine Directive, as the source authority for the entry.

Battlefield maintenance belongs to the logistics side of military operations. NATO logistics publications discuss it alongside supply, maintenance, repair and battlefield recovery. For a Canadian supplier, BM2 is a piece of NATO vocabulary that may appear in defence-related documents, and its meaning is fixed by the NATO glossary.

How NATO records the BM2 abbreviation

The entry sits in the 2013 edition of AAP-15, which lists English abbreviations with their French counterparts. The glossary pairs BM2 with the full English term, the French term and the authority that supplied it. In this case the authority is NSDD.

NATO also maintains NATOTerm, its official terminology database for non-classified military and NATO-relevant terminology. The NATO Terminology Office, part of the NATO Standardization Office, maintains it. NATOTerm is the current NATO reference for checking terminology.

Battlefield maintenance in NATO logistics

NATO's Logistics Handbook treats battlefield maintenance as part of a wider logistics picture that includes supply, maintenance, repair and battlefield recovery. The idea is to keep equipment working in or near the area of operations.

A related concept is battle-damage repair. The NATO Logistics Handbook describes it as a technique intended to restore damaged materiel to a battle-worthy condition rapidly, so that the materiel can complete its mission. Speed and mission completion define this kind of repair.

BM2 compared with BM3 and BMS2

Similar-looking abbreviations in the same glossary have different meanings. BM3 stands for battlefield management. BMS2 stands for battlefield management system. BM2 refers only to battlefield maintenance.

• BM2: battlefield maintenance
• BM3: battlefield management
• BMS2: battlefield management system

Bid teams reading NATO-related material should confirm which of these is meant before interpreting a requirement.

NSPA and maintenance support

Maintenance is a recognized area of NATO procurement. The NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA) carries out work that includes the acquisition, operation and maintenance of weapon systems and related support services. This is NATO procurement context. It shows where maintenance support sits in NATO's wider activity, and it is separate from the definition of BM2 itself.

What BM2 means for a supplier bidding on Canadian public contracts

BM2 is a NATO term, so use the NATO meaning, battlefield maintenance, whenever the abbreviation appears in a document that references NATO standards or publications. For any Canadian solicitation, read the definitions and statement of work in the tender documents themselves, because they set the maintenance requirement that a bid must answer. Federal opportunities are listed on CanadaBuys.

Bid teams working on defence maintenance and logistics requirements can use the NATO glossary and NATOTerm to keep abbreviations consistent across their proposal, and should avoid confusing BM2 with BM3 or BMS2.