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The scope here is Department-wide. DD Form 3047 — DD Form X636, Disposition of Remains Election Statement - Notification of Subsequently Identified Partial Remains, 20150129 draft — exists to Disposition of Remains Election Statement Notification of Subsequently Identified Partial Remains, 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.
Requirement traces to not stated; the form belongs to not stated. Everything about schedule sits below that in local instruction, which is where to ask if a date matters.
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comparison is the first thing worth making, because a DD form supersedes centrally and an old copy in a shared drive is out of date for every office, not just yours.
Available: PDF, across 1 pages, roughly 24 fields.
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
- 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. Option 1. Transferred for burial above original casket. Initials.
- Funeral home name and address.
- Option 2. Transferred to funeral home for cremation at government expense. Initials.
- Urn choice. X first box if solid bronze, second if solid walnut.
- Funeral home name and address.
- Option 3. Cremated and delivered. Initials.
- Urn choice. X first box if solid bronze, second if solid walnut.
- Deliver to: Name and address.
- Option 4. I authorize the appropriate Military Service to make disposition by burial at sea. Initials.
- Option 5. Armed Forces Medical Examiner System may retain for teaching/research and as a medical specimen. Initials.
- I do not want to be notified, and authorize the parent Service to make disposition. Initials.
- 6. In the event that further subsequent remains are identified: Notify, option 1. I would like to be notified and choose to accept individual portions for disposition. Initials.
- b. Date.
- 8.a. Typed or printed name of witness.
- c. Date.
- 7.a. Signature of PADD.
- b. Signature of witness.
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.
Sequence matters. Identification precedes content, content precedes certification, because the lower half of a form is generally conditioned on the upper half.
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.
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.
Signature comes after everything else and must be a signature: pen, or a credentialed digital signature via Common Access Card. Typing does not qualify. Add the date at the same moment.
Final pass, against the standing defect list: superseded edition, empty mandatory fields, handwriting illegible after scanning, non-conforming dates, missing signature or date. For anything ambiguous in a specific field, the form's own instructions come first and not stated controls where the two differ.
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.
Look up cross-referenced forms by series and number. DD numbering is unified across the Department, which removes the usual step of identifying which service issued the thing.
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.
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 3047?
- DD Form X636, Disposition of Remains Election Statement - Notification of Subsequently 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?