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DD Form 616 is a Department of Defense form, not a service form: DD Form 616, Report of Return of Absentee, December 1999, used to Report of Return of Absentee. 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.
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.
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.
Formats: PDF. Length 1 pages, approximately 29 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.
Nothing costs anything here. Work in a full desktop pdf application rather than a browser preview; field behaviour in browsers is unreliable.
What the form asks for
- 1. Distribution (same as DD form 553 at time of absence).
- Report control symbol.
- 2. Name of Absentee (last, first, middle initial).
- 3. Service.
- 4. Social Security Number. Do not include dashes.
- 5. Grade or Rate.
- 6. a. Former absentee status. Press space bar to mark X in first box if escaped or sentenced prisoner, second box if absentee, or third box if deserter (administrative).
- 6. b. Date/hour Absence Began (Four Digit Year, Two Digit Month, Two Digit Day).
- 6. c. Organization and installation from which absent.
- 7. Circumstances of absentee's return. a. Mode of return. X first box if apprehended, second box if surrendered.
- b. Authorities to whom absentee surrendered or by whom apprehended. X first box if military, second box if civil, third box if FBI, fourth box if DIS, or fifth box if other.
- 7.b.(5) Specify other authority.
- 7. c. Place of Initial Return.
- 7.d. Date/hour of initial return (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- e. Required action. X first box if return to military control, second box if retained by civil authorities, third box if civil charges, or fourth box if safekeeping.
- 7.f. Military organization and installation or civilian location.
- 7.g. Date returned to military control (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- 8. Disposition of absentee. a. Action by military authorities. X first box if retained, second box if transferred, third box if technical arrest orders, or fourth box if guard.
- 8.b. To (Name of Command in charge of absentee).
- 8.c. Cost of transportation to be charged to individuals account.
- 9. Remarks (include location of Service, Pay and Health Records).
- 10. Authorizing Official. a. Typed Name (Last, first, middle initial).
- 10.b. Grade.
- 10.c. 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.
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.
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.
Do not read across from a service number. DA numbering is Army-specific under an Army proponent; DD numbering is Department-wide under not stated or an equivalent Department office. The sequences are unrelated, so identical digits in each identify two different documents. Read the prefix, not the digits.
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 616?
- DD Form 616, Report of Return of Absentee, December 1999
- Which edition is current?
- Not stated by the publisher
- Who is responsible for this form?
- Not stated
- In which formats can it be downloaded?