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DD Form 2489 is a Department of Defense form, not a service form: DD Form 2489, DoDMERB Farnsworth Lantern and Red/Green Color Vision Tests, March 2008, used to DoD Medical Examination Review Board (DoDMERB) Farnsworth Lantern & Red/Green Color Vision Tests. The DD prefix is the operative fact. It means one blank serves every military department — Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Space Force, Coast Guard under Defense jurisdiction — plus the defense agencies and combatant commands. No branch variant exists.
Authority: not stated prescribes it, not stated maintains it. Those two names settle most disputes about why the form is being asked for. Local commands add timing on top; the requirement itself comes from above them.
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.
The set is PDF. Size: 2 pages, about 41 fields. Everything below refines that choice.
Fillable pdf is the default choice. Its boxes hold typed entries inside the document; the printable release is a static image of the same page with no interactive layer. Since DD forms routinely cross between services and agencies before they are filed, typed entries matter more here than on a form that stays inside one office.
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
- 1. Name of applicant (last, first, middle initial).
- 2. Social security number. Do not include dashes.
- First run. Indicate by letter the applicants' responses. Green/Red.
- White/green.
- Green/white.
- Green/green.
- Red/Green.
- White/Red.
- White/White.
- Red/White.
- Red/Red.
- Number of errors per run.
- Second run. Green/Red.
- White/green.
- Green/white.
- Green/green.
- Red/Green.
- White/Red.
- White/White.
- Red/White.
- Red/Red.
- Number of errors per run.
- Third run. Green/Red.
- White/green.
Edition check comes first, ahead of any entry. Compare the printed date to not stated and replace anything older. Department-level supersession is simultaneous across the services, so a superseded blank is not merely out of date locally; the office receiving it is already working from the new field structure whichever branch it belongs to.
Fill top to bottom. Identification, then substance, then certification — lower fields commonly derive from the header, and completing out of order produces internal contradictions a reviewer will catch.
Mark inapplicable items N/A rather than leaving white space. Use the date format the form specifies. This matters more on Department forms than on service forms: the record may be reviewed by personnel outside your branch who share none of your office conventions.
The Privacy Act Statement precedes the personal data fields for a reason. It gives the collection authority, the principal purpose, the routine uses and whether disclosure is voluntary or mandatory. Read it while the disclosure decision is still yours to make.
Certification closes the form. Ink on paper, or a digital signature — normally CAC-applied — in software that supports it. Typed text in the signature box is a name, not an execution. Enter the date beside it before closing the file.
Check before submitting. The recurring failures are edition mismatch, gaps in required boxes, unreadable scanned handwriting, wrong date format, and certification without signature or date. Field-level questions go to the printed instructions, then to not stated, which is authoritative.
Send it as not stated or local guidance specifies. Save a copy. Cross-service and cross-agency routing is normal for Department forms, and a lost original outside your own organization is harder to chase down.
A number is a complete address in the DD series. Because the sequence is Department-level and not duplicated per service, there is nothing further to specify.
Where a procedure cites both a service form and a DD form, the two are unconnected. Service numbering answers to a service proponent, DD numbering to not stated or another Department office, and the two sequences were never aligned. Matching numbers mean nothing whatever.
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.
Limits of this page: it distributes a published Department of Defense document and describes it. No legal advice, no procedural ruling, no statement about whether any submission will be accepted. Applicability, eligibility and procedure belong to not stated, to a servicing personnel office, or to the office named in not stated.
Questions and answers
- What is DD Form 2489?
- DD Form 2489, DoDMERB Farnsworth Lantern and Red/Green Color Vision Tests, March 2008
- Which edition is current?
- Not stated by the publisher
- Who is responsible for this form?
- Not stated
- In which formats can it be downloaded?