What's AQAP and what and when should you know about their standards?

The Short Story

The Allied Quality Assurance Publications (AQAP) publishes some standards that are freely available (which you might now know but is uncommon, because standards are - in some cases - also a business). As you might have already noticed, the focus is on QA of systems (be it hardware systems or software systems).

Example:
Standard: NATO - AQAP-2110 - NATO QUALITY ASSURANCE REQUIREMENTS FOR DESIGN, DEVELOPMENT AND PRODUCTION

If you intend to work for NATO, or for the defence sector (navy, air force, and so on), you have to know them. If your company is to be contracted by NATO, you'll have to have your company certified in some of them. "Vague enough"? If so, you'll have to learn more on the subject.

The Long Story

Quoting Wikipedia (as per 2017-05-02):
"The Allied Quality Assurance Publications (AQAP) are standards for quality assurance systems that have been developed by NATO. The aim of the AQAP agreement is to define standards for Quality Assurance of defence products. These standards are an integral part of contracts awarded in the military field involving NATO member countries. AQAP documents are therefore important to contractors and companies wanting to bid for such contracts.

The AQAP system is described in STANAG 4107 issued by the NATO Standardization Agency. There are currently two main types of AQAP documents; Contractual Type which are written as a Technical Specification intended for contractual use; and Guidance Type which provide general guidance."

List of current publications (standards)

• AQAP 160 NATO Integrated Quality Requirements for Software throughout the Life Cycle
• AQAP 169 NATO Guidance on the Use of AQAP 160 Ed.1
• AQAP 2000 NATO Policy on an Integrated Systems Approach to Quality through the Life Cycle
• AQAP 2009 NATO Guidance on the Use of the AQAP 2000 Series
• AQAP 2050 NATO Project Assessment Model
• AQAP 2070 NATO Mutual Government Quality Assurance (GQA) Process
• AQAP 2105 NATO Requirements for Deliverable Quality Plans
• AQAP 2110 NATO Quality Assurance Requirements for Design, Development and Production
• AQAP 2120 NATO Quality Assurance Requirements for Production
• AQAP 2130 NATO Quality Assurance Requirements for Inspection and Test
• AQAP 2131 NATO Quality Assurance Requirements for Final Inspection
• AQAP 2210 NATO Supplementary Software Quality Assurance Requirements to AQAP 2110
• AQAP 2310 NATO Quality Management System Requirements for Aviation, Space and Defence Suppliers (Source: Wikipedia)

Note: AQAP-150 was superseeded by AQAP-2210. Note the "Inactive" status in the previous link.

(@2017-05-09: Added reference to deprecation of AQAP-150, and hyperlinks to 2110 and 2210)