Download the form
Treat DD Form 1278 as Department-level, which changes how you look for it. Title: DD Form 278, Department of Defense Certification of Overseas Assignment to Support Application to File Petition for Naturalization, May 2000. Function: Certificate of Oversea Assignment to Support Application to File Petition for Naturalization. Because the number carries DD rather than a service prefix, the same edition covers all military departments and the defense agencies at once. Nobody issues a Navy copy or an Air Force copy.
Requirement traces to not stated; the form belongs to not stated. Everything about schedule sits below that in local instruction, which is where to ask if a date matters.
Current edition is not stated, carried as not stated. Check that against any copy you already hold before doing anything else — Department-level revisions land everywhere simultaneously, so a stale file is stale across the whole Department.
Available: PDF, across 1 pages, roughly 18 fields.
Xfdl is a legacy Department format, IBM Lotus Forms, requiring the matching viewer. Its survival in DD distribution reflects how widely it was fielded across the Department, not any advantage over pdf today.
Free download, every format. Do not fill the form in a browser tab — browser pdf viewers handle interactive fields inconsistently and discard entries on close.
What the form asks for
- Press this Reset button to clear the data from all fields.
- Press space bar to mark X if person is the dependent spouse of the above named sponsor.
- Mark X if person is the adopted child of the sponsor.
- 2. From: agency, command or installation.
- 3. Certification. This is to certify that (sponsor's name: last, first, middle initial).
- of (organization name).
- is, or is being, assigned to (country).
- On or about (date: four digit year, two digit month, two digit day).
- Name of dependent spouse (last, first, middle initial).
- On or about (date - 4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- Name of adopted child (last, first, middle initial).
- On or about (date - 4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- 4. Issuing official. a. Typed name (last, first, middle initial).
- 4.b. Grade.
- 4.c. Title.
- 4.d. Signature.
- 4.e. Date signed (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
Start by matching the printed date to not stated. Old blanks accumulate in shared folders for years. Because the Department reissues to all services in one action, nobody is still accepting the previous layout by local custom.
Field-level questions go to the printed instructions, then to not stated, which is authoritative.
Route it where not stated or local procedure directs, and keep a copy first. On a Department form the receiving office is frequently outside your own chain — another service, a defense agency, a joint command — which makes recovering a lost original slower than it would be internally.
Related forms are found by number alone. The DD sequence is one unified Department-wide series, so a cited number resolves to exactly one document with no branch qualifier needed.
Do not read across from a service number. DA numbering is Army-specific under an Army proponent; DD numbering is Department-wide under not stated or an equivalent Department office. The sequences are unrelated, so identical digits in each identify two different documents. Read the prefix, not the digits.
Editions change when the prescribing directive is reissued, when the data collected changes, or when notice language is amended. None of that reaches you. Checking not stated at download is the entire defence, and it is cheaper than repeating a submission.
This page publishes a Defense document and explains its contents. It does not advise, does not rule on applicability, and determines nothing about how a completed form will be treated. Direct such questions to not stated, to the servicing personnel office, or to the office designated in not stated.
Questions and answers
- What is DD Form 1278?
- DD Form 278, Department of Defense Certification of Overseas Assignment to Support Application to File Petition for Naturalization, May 2000
- Which edition is current?
- Not stated by the publisher
- Who is responsible for this form?
- Not stated
- In which formats can it be downloaded?