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The scope here is Department-wide. DD Form 2861 — Cross-Reference — exists to Cross-Reference, 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.
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.
Available: PDF, across unknown pages, roughly unknown fields.
Nothing costs anything here. Work in a full desktop pdf application rather than a browser preview; field behaviour in browsers is unreliable.
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.
Field-level questions go to the printed instructions, then to not stated, which is authoritative.
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.
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.
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.
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 2861?
- Cross-Reference
- Which edition is current?
- Not stated by the publisher
- Who is responsible for this form?
- Not stated
- In which formats can it be downloaded?