This paper will discuss the application of software quality assurance techniques to trainer software development, taking into consideration military standards and specifications and the unique characteristics of trainer development programs. Because military customers are paying greater attention to software development and software documentation, software quality assurance has become an increasingly important management objective. Although there are no quick recipes for adapting software quality assurance techniques and standards to trainer development, this objective can be met by analyzing the software specifications and standards along with the software quality assurance specifications and standards, by considering the unique aspects of trainer development, and by considering the aspects of applying and adapting software standards to trainer development. First, the various specifications and standards that apply to software development must be analyzed with particular attention paid to their interrelationships and to their relationships with deliverable data items. Then, this conceptual framework must be related to the software quality assurance standards and specifications. Differences and similarities between the standards and specifications written by different military customers will also be considered. Given this overall picture of the requirements for software development and quality assurance, the unique aspects of trainer development may be considered. Among these are shortened schedules, abbreviated data requirements and the application of weapon system standards to trainer development. Once the various requirements and the peculiar constraints of trainer development have been analyzed, the next step is to consider the meaningful application of software standards and quality assurance techniques to trainers. Among these considerations are cost effectiveness, who should accomplish the various quality assurance tasks, applicability of internal standards, whether tasks are best handled on a company or program basis, tailoring quality assurance functions to program needs, and the problem of assuring quality of software when there are no specific software data item requirements. In conclusion, this paper will present an approach to developing a software quality assurance program for trainer system development.