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DD Form 3046 is a Department of Defense form, not a service form: DD Form X635, Disposition of Remains Election Statement - Initial Notification of Identified Partial Remains, 20150129 draft, used to Disposition of Remains Election Statement Initial Notification of Identified Partial Remains. 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.
Use not stated, status not stated. Older printings circulate widely and lose their currency Department-wide the moment a new edition issues.
The set is PDF. Size: 1 pages, about 16 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
- 1. Name of deceased (last, first, middle initial).
- 2. Service/grade of deceased.
- 3. DCIPS Case number.
- 4. Person Authorized to Direct Disposition (PADD). a. Name (last, first, middle initial).
- b. Relationship to deceased.
- c. Telephone number (include area code).
- d. Current residence address (street, apartment number, city, state and zip code).
- 5. Selection of disposition options. Section I - election for currently recovered remains. Option 1. I would like to receive the incomplete remains at this time. Initials.
- Option 2. I would like to have the incomplete remains temporarily held until other remains are identified. Initials.
- Section II - Election in the event of future individual identification. Option 1. I would like to be notified if additional remains are identified. Initials.
- Option 2. I do not want to be notified of additional remains and authorize the military service to cremate and bury at sea. Initials.
- b. Date.
- 7.a. Typed or printed name of witness.
- c. Date.
- 6.a. Signature of PADD.
- b. Signature of witness.
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.
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.
Nothing stays blank. N/A on an inapplicable item, because an empty box is indistinguishable from a skipped question and the form returns for it. Dates follow the format printed beside the field, not local habit — a joint form is read by clerks in several services with different date conventions, and ambiguity is expensive.
Privacy Act Statement first, personal entries second. It names the authority for the collection, what the data is for, who else routinely sees it, and whether you have to answer at all.
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.
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.
Revision follows directive changes, changed data requirements and amended notice language, unannounced. Verify not stated each time rather than trusting a saved copy — the cost of the check is seconds.
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 3046?
- DD Form X635, Disposition of Remains Election Statement - Initial Notification of Identified Partial Remains, 20150129 draft
- Which edition is current?
- Not stated by the publisher
- Who is responsible for this form?
- Not stated
- In which formats can it be downloaded?