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The scope here is Department-wide. DD Form 2518 — DD Form 2518, Fulfillment of DOD Mandatory Training Requirement, September 1988. — exists to Fulfillment of DoD Mandatory Training Requirement, and it applies across the services rather than inside one. That is what the DD prefix encodes: joint issue, single edition, every branch and defense agency working from identical paper.
not stated is the prescribing publication and not stated the office responsible for the document. Deadlines belong to local implementing guidance, not to either of those, so a submission date is a question for the receiving office.
Edition not stated, status not stated. That comparison is the first thing worth making, because a DD form supersedes centrally and an old copy in a shared drive is out of date for every office, not just yours.
Formats: PDF. Length 1 pages, approximately 27 entries.
Skip xfdl unless the viewer is already installed. It is the IBM Lotus Forms format, adopted Department-wide for electronic forms and still present in the set for that reason; ordinary pdf software reports it as unreadable.
All formats are free. One operational note: save the file locally and open it in a desktop reader. Browser-embedded viewers drop field properties and lose typed data without warning.
What the form asks for
- 2. Course Number.
- 3. Course title.
- 6. Signature.
- Section 1 - Individual request. 1. Name (last, first, middle initial).
- 7. Date signed (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- 8. Social security number. Do not include dashes.
- 9. Title.
- 4. Course level (entry, intermediate, senior, etc.).
- 10. Series.
- 11. Grade/rank.
- 12. Office symbol.
- 13. Location.
- 14. Current level (entry, immediate, senior, etc.).
- 15. Date entered current level (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- Section 2 - Supervisor's recommendation. 16. Concurrence/nonconcurrence. Press space bar to mark X in first box if concur, second box if do not concur.
- 17. Supervisor signature.
- 18. Date signed (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- 19. Duty title.
- 20. Office symbol.
- 21. Location.
- Section 3 - Disposition. 22. Approval/disapproval. X first box if approved, second box if disapproved.
- 23. Signature of approving official.
- 24. Date signed (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- 25. Duty title.
Verify the edition before the first keystroke. The date on the form face should read not stated. If it does not, discard the file. Field numbering shifts between editions, and on a DD form the new layout reaches every receiving office in every service at once — there is no lag during which the old version is still normal somewhere.
Work the printed sequence: header, body, signature block. The order is functional rather than decorative, since entries below frequently key to identifying data above them.
Complete every field, N/A where an item does not apply, dates exactly as the form prescribes. A DD form crosses service lines, and a convention obvious in one branch is not obvious in the next.
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.
Sign last, in ink or with a credentialed digital signature. A typed name in a signature field certifies nothing. CAC-based signing is the usual electronic method where the receiving system supports it. Date the block immediately — unsigned and undated certifications account for a large share of returns.
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.
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.
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 2518?
- DD Form 2518, Fulfillment of DOD Mandatory Training Requirement, September 1988.
- Which edition is current?
- Not stated by the publisher
- Who is responsible for this form?
- Not stated
- In which formats can it be downloaded?