Download the form
Use DA Form 5140 when you need to caution tag. Full title: CAUTION TAG. Everything you need is on this page — the file, the entry rules, the routing. Edition 06/01/1999, status ACTIVE, unknown page(s), roughly unknown fields.
Authority sits in two places. USACE owns the form, not stated says when it is raised and where it goes. Routine cases need neither read in full — the page itself carries the sequence. The entries are completed by their subject or by unit administrative staff working from what that person supplies.
Pick by how you will enter data: none published here on offer. Typing means fillable pdf, where the boxes accept keystrokes and hold them on save. Handwriting means printable pdf, a flat page image sent straight to a printer. Neither version changes what appears on the page.
Save the download and open it in a dedicated reader. That single step prevents the common failure: an in-browser viewer accepts your typing and discards it at tab close. Confirm with one field and one save cycle before committing the whole form.
Free, unregistered, unmodified. What arrives is what the publisher released.
Start at the top and get the header exactly right. Official spelling of the name, identification number, unit, date. Everything downstream finds the record through those entries; nothing else on the page has that consequence.
Move between fields with tab; the build-time order follows the page and misses nothing. Click check boxes and option buttons, and expect an exclusive group to release the old choice when you set a new one. The trap is field width. Single-line fields do not wrap, so an overlong entry displays complete on screen and prints cut at the margin — put it in remarks or on a continuation instead. Mark inapplicable fields rather than leaving them blank, since an empty box carries no information about whether the question was read.
Sign last. An unsigned form is a draft whatever else is on it, and additional signatures — reviewer, approver, witness — follow printed block order with each signer dating the day they sign, not the day of preparation. Four faults account for most returns: a blank mandatory field, transposed digits in an identification number, day and month reversed in a date, and leftover entries in a working copy reused instead of a fresh blank. Read the form once from the top before releasing it.
The Privacy Act statement is read before the personal entries, not after. It gives the collection authority, the purpose, the routine uses and whether disclosure is mandatory or voluntary. Once filled, your copy is a personal record and gets stored and transmitted accordingly.
Send it where the directive says: the office it names, the unit administrative channel, or the individual's file. Take your copy before submission. How long the record is held comes from the schedule for the series, not from the office holding it.
Companion documents come from the same series and number scheme. Within the DA series, a shared proponent or a shared directive usually means shared use, and a form cited on the face of another accompanies it. Gather the whole package first — continuation sheets, cover sheets, transmittals.
Check the edition date before reusing a saved copy. Revisions come from the proponent without notice to you, and the printed date is the only version marker on the page. Already-submitted records under a superseded edition stand as filed; the change does not run backwards.
What is distributed here are reproductions of published Department of the Army documents. Independent site, no official standing, no forms of its own. Nothing on the page constitutes legal advice, and acceptance by any office is outside what can be stated. Put questions about entries, requirements or eligibility to USACE or your servicing administrative office.
Questions and answers
- What is DA Form 5140?
- CAUTION TAG
- Which edition is current?
- 06/01/1999
- Who is responsible for this form?
- USACE
- In which formats can it be downloaded?
- No file published here