The prime concern of this paper is to outline how Spain's involvement in NATO generates an enormous volume of translation requirements which far exceed the capacity of the established official channels of translation, and, more particularly, to examine the essential characteristics of this variant of translation work. Therefore, the paper is divided into two principal areas of consideration: a) A brief overview of the practice of military translation with particular reference to the Spanish case. b) Some practical problems posed by the translation of military documents from English into Spanish, and from Spanish into English.