Administrative documents are written for readers who were not present, and DA Form 5582-R is no exception. Titled ATACMS MISSILE/MLRS PRACTICE ROCKET FIRING DATA REPORT (REPORT__OF__ FOR THIS MISSION), it is used to atacms missile/mlrs practice rocket firing data report (lra) — a transaction that means little in conversation and a great deal in a file. The published edition here carries the date February 1993 and the status not stated. Its 2 page(s) and roughly 200 fields are sized to what the record must prove years later, which is always more than the moment appears to need.
The form has an author and an occasion, held by different authorities. DCS, G-4 owns the content and reshapes it when what is being recorded changes. PAM 700-19 governs the event that calls for the form and the route the finished document takes afterwards. Keeping those two apart is what allows a procedure to be amended without the page being rebuilt each time.
Retrieval governs the order of entry. The head of the form takes name, identification number, unit and date, and those values become the handles by which the record is found later — the substantive blocks are never searched on. This is why the spelling must match official records exactly rather than approximately.
The rules of entry all trace back to the page being fixed in advance. Tabbing follows the order built into the form, which usually matches how the page reads and misses less than clicking. An exclusive group discards the earlier selection because contradictory entries would make the record unusable. One-line fields have no wrap because print positions are predetermined, so an overlong entry displays fully and prints truncated. Longer text goes to the remarks area or a continuation, both provided for exactly that. Where nothing applies, the nil mark is entered — a blank leaves the reader unable to tell a considered answer from a skipped one.
The signature is the point at which entries become an assertion someone stands behind, so it follows everything else and its absence leaves a draft. Countersignatures by reviewing, approving or witnessing officials each carry their own weight and are dated at signing, which is how the file preserves the order of responsibility. Seen that way, the familiar errors are not clerical trivia: an unanswered mandatory field, digits transposed in an identification number, day and month reversed, and residue from a reused file each put something false or unresolved into a document that will be relied upon.
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
Why several files for one page? Because the form has to be completed in a headquarters and in places without a workstation, and PDF, XFDL covers both. The fillable pdf holds interactive fields that fix each entry in place and remove handwriting from the equation. The printable pdf is the same layout without those fields, meant for a printer and a pen. Neither is a lesser copy of the other; each answers a condition the other cannot.
Where a file opens matters more than it appears to. A browser will display a pdf, but browser viewers were built to read documents, and some accept keystrokes into fields they never intended to store — the entries are gone at tab close, without warning, because saving was never part of what that viewer does. A dedicated reader is built around the file's own structure and keeps what you enter. The xfdl file belongs to a different lineage entirely: IBM Lotus Forms, adopted across Army systems for the routing and signature handling built into it. That is why only the Lotus Forms Viewer reads it.
No charge and no account apply: these are published documents, and access to them is not something a distributor is entitled to price.
What the form asks for
- ATACMS
- ATTEMPTNO
- BUTTON1
- BUTTON10
- BUTTON100
- BUTTON100_1
- BUTTON101
- BUTTON101_1
- BUTTON102
- BUTTON102_1
- BUTTON103
- BUTTON103_1
- BUTTON104
- BUTTON104_1
- BUTTON105
- BUTTON105_1
- BUTTON106
- BUTTON106_1
- BUTTON107
- BUTTON107_1
- BUTTON108
- BUTTON108_1
- BUTTON109
- BUTTON109_1
The routing in PAM 700-19 decides where the document goes — a named office, the administrative channel, or the individual's file — and the records schedule for the series decides how long it stays. Neither is a local judgement, because a record system loses its meaning if each office keeps things for its own preferred interval. Copy the form before submitting it.
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.
Editions change because the process changes, and the printed edition date is the only marker of which version a page belongs to. A copy saved locally cannot know it has been superseded, so the date on it is compared against the edition in force before reuse. Records already executed under an earlier edition are left alone — a document is read under the terms it was made, and reopening completed files to match a later form would falsify the account.
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. DCS, G-4 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 5582-R?
- ATACMS MISSILE/MLRS PRACTICE ROCKET FIRING DATA REPORT (REPORT__OF__ FOR THIS MISSION)
- Which edition is current?
- February 1993
- Who is responsible for this form?
- DCS, G-4
- In which formats can it be downloaded?
- PDF, XFDL