Download the form
DD Form 2839 is a Department of Defense form, not a service form: DD Form 2839, Career Status Bonus (CSB) Election, April 2009, used to Career Status Bonus Election. 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.
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.
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: 3 pages, about 48 fields. Everything below refines that choice.
Default to fillable pdf, print only when you must. The fillable file stores what you type; the printable file is a blank picture. A Department form often travels further than a service form — scanned, emailed, forwarded to an agency that never saw the original — and typed text is what survives that.
What the form asks for
- Section 1 - Personal identification. 1. Name (last, first, middle initial).
- 2. Social security number (do not include dashes).
- 3. Rank/pay grade/branch of service.
- 4. Date of initial entry into military service (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day, no dividers).
- 5. Date for determination of active duty service completed (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- 6. Date of notification (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- Section 2. Determination of eligibility. 7. Press space bar to mark X in first box if eligible to elect Career Status Bonus, or second box if not eligible.
- If not eligible, give reason.
- 8. Date of determination (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- 9. Service authenticating representative. a. Printed name (last, first, middle initial).
- b. Signature.
- Section 3 - Not eligible for Career Status Bonus. 10.a. Signature.
- b. Date signed (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- 11. Witness. a. Printed name (last, first, middle initial).
- b. Rank/pay grade.
- c. Position/duty title.
- d. Organization.
- e. Organizational address.
- f. Signature.
- g. Date signed (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- Section 4 - Eligible and electing. 12.a. I elect to receive the CSB as follows: X first box if single lump sum payment of $30,000, second box if 2 annual payments of $15,000, third box if 3 annual payments of $10,000, fourth box if 4 annual payments of $7,500, or fifth box if 5 annual payments of $6,000.
- b. Signature.
- c. Date signed (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- 13. Witness. a. Printed name (last, first, middle initial).
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.
For anything ambiguous in a specific field, the form's own instructions come first and not stated controls where the two differ.
Submit to the office named in not stated or in local instruction; retain a duplicate before it leaves. Joint routing often sends a DD form across organizational boundaries, and tracing one afterward is not a same-day matter.
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.
Prefix before number. A DA citation and a DD citation in the same instruction point at separate systems — one Army, administered by an Army proponent, one Department-wide under not stated — and there is no correspondence between them at any number.
Three drivers of revision: directive reissue, altered collection requirements, updated statutory notice text. No notification accompanies any of them, so download fresh and confirm not stated rather than reusing an archived file.
What is here is the blank form and a description of it. What is not here is legal guidance or any assurance about a particular filing — this page is not the issuing authority and does not speak for one. Those questions go to not stated, to your servicing administrative office, or to the authority identified in not stated.
Questions and answers
- What is DD Form 2839?
- DD Form 2839, Career Status Bonus (CSB) Election, April 2009
- Which edition is current?
- Not stated by the publisher
- Who is responsible for this form?
- Not stated
- In which formats can it be downloaded?