The organization was intended to assist national and international programs to develop insensitive munitions (IM).

[2] The idea for NIMIC was born at the NATO AC/310 "Workshop on Insensitive Munitions Information Exchange" in 1986 and was actively supported by the Chairman of AC/310, IGA M. Thévenin and Principal US Member of AC/310, Dr. R.

The PILOT-NIMIC office was located at Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) of Johns Hopkins University, Laurel, Maryland, USA.

The initial team comprised a project manager and five technical specialists - basically the same structure MSIAC shows today (see below).

[4] With a given broader emphasis on Munitions Safety it was decided to modify NIMIC's scope to take this change into account.