The reason DA Form 260-1 looks the way it does is that a file has to speak for itself. Officially REQUEST FOR PUBLISHING - DA TRAINING, DOCTRINAL, TECHNICAL, AND EQUIPMENT PUBLICATIONS, it serves to request for publishing - da training, doctrinal, technical and equipment publications, and the record it produces outlasts the people and the circumstances behind it. Edition 06/01/2018, status ACTIVE, is the version published here: 1 page(s), close to 200 fields, each one present because some later reader will need that fact without being able to ask for it.
Behind any Army form sit two separate decisions. What the document asks is settled by CIO, which maintains and revises it. Whether you raise it, and where it goes once signed, is settled by AR 25-30. That division is the reason a form can outlive several changes in the process it serves.
Identification precedes substance for a structural reason. Name, identification number, organisation and date of preparation are how the finished document is located in a file or a database; the body of the form is what someone reads after the search has succeeded. Spell the name as official records spell it, since the search runs against those records and not against habit.
Tab order is not a convenience feature; it was fixed when the form was built and generally traces the page, so following it produces the sequence the designer intended and leaves fewer gaps than a mouse. Exclusive option groups clear the previous selection because the record is not permitted to hold two contradictory answers. Single-line fields do not wrap for the same reason the layout is fixed: the printed page has to fall in known positions, so text past the field width is cut at the margin even though the screen still shows it whole. Overflow belongs in remarks or on a continuation, where there is room designed for it. And an inapplicable field is marked rather than skipped, since a blank tells a later reader nothing about whether the question was considered.
Signing is the act that makes the document evidence, and until it happens the entries are only a proposal. Additional signatures — reviewer, approver, witness — each stand for a separate judgement, dated when applied so the record shows who accepted what and in what order. The common faults all damage that record in the same way: a blank mandatory field breaks the chain of required answers, swapped digits in an identification number detach the document from its subject, an inverted day and month misplaces it in time, and stale data from a reused copy states things nobody meant to state.
The Privacy Act statement is on the page because collecting personal information requires the collector to disclose the terms first — the authority relied on, the purpose, the routine uses, and whether an answer is required or may be withheld. That order is the point: the statement is read before the entries it governs, since consent given afterwards is not consent. Once completed, the copy is a personal record and carries the handling obligations that attach to one.
Download the form
Formats exist because completion happens under different conditions, not because anyone wanted variety. The published set is PDF. A fillable pdf carries live entry objects, so typed text lands in fixed positions and stays legible whoever reads it later. A printable pdf drops those objects and leaves the page as an image, which is what an office needs where a screen is unavailable and a pen is not. The document itself is unchanged between them; what differs is the circumstance each anticipates.
The choice of application decides whether your work survives. Browsers render pdfs as documents to be read; where a viewer shows fields without a mechanism to store them, typed text disappears when the tab closes, and nothing announces the loss. A full reader treats the file as a form and preserves entries on save.
Downloads are free and unregistered. The material was published for general use, and the files are passed on unaltered.
What the form asks for
- ADDL_SPECS
- ADDRESS_A
- ADDRESS_B
- ADDRESS_C
- ADDRESS_D
- ADDRESS_E
- ADDRESS_F
- ADDRESS_G
- ADDRESS_H
- ADDRESS_I
- ADDRESS_J
- ADDRESS_K
- ADDRESS_L
- ADDRESS_M
- ADDRESS_N
- ADDRESS_O
- ADDRESS_P
- ADDRESS_Q
- ADDRESS_R
- ADDRESS_S
- ADDRESS_T
- ADDRESS_U
- ADDRESS_V
- AGENCYA
Disposition is prescribed, not chosen. AR 25-30 names the destination, whether that is a specific office, the unit administrative channel or the personal record, and the applicable records schedule governs how long it survives there. Both rules exist to keep the file consistent across offices with different habits. Take your copy before the document leaves, since it will not come back.
Related documents are located by series and number, and the relation is rarely accidental — forms under one proponent or one directive tend to serve steps of a single procedure. Anything the DA series form names on its face normally travels with it, as do the continuations, covers and transmittals the process generates. Assembling them together is what makes the submission a complete account.
Revision follows the process, which is why editions appear without a fixed interval, and the printed date rather than any version number identifies them. Nothing on a stored copy signals that it has aged; the check is manual. Work already completed under a superseded edition stands as filed, because the record was made under those terms and is properly interpreted under them.
It is worth being plain about what this page is within all of the above. The files are reproductions of published Department of the Army documents, offered for download by a site with no official standing and no part in issuing anything. That matters because the machinery described here — proponency, prescribing directives, records schedules — runs entirely elsewhere. Nothing written here is legal advice, and no statement can be made about whether an office will accept a given document. CIO and the administrative office servicing your unit answer questions of entry, requirement and eligibility, and they are the ones positioned to.
Questions and answers
- What is DA Form 260-1?
- REQUEST FOR PUBLISHING - DA TRAINING, DOCTRINAL, TECHNICAL, AND EQUIPMENT PUBLICATIONS
- Which edition is current?
- 06/01/2018
- Who is responsible for this form?
- CIO
- In which formats can it be downloaded?
- PDF, PDF