The reason DA Form 5698 looks the way it does is that a file has to speak for itself. Officially WEAPONS LOCATION DATA, it serves to weapons location data, and the record it produces outlasts the people and the circumstances behind it. Edition 05/01/2016, status ACTIVE, is the version published here: 1 page(s), close to 120 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 USAFAS, which maintains and revises it. Whether you raise it, and where it goes once signed, is settled by ATP 3-09.50. That division is the reason a form can outlive several changes in the process it serves.
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.
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
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.
Software determines whether an entry lasts. A browser viewer is designed for reading, and several will take typed input into fields without any means of writing it back — the text is simply absent when you reopen. A standalone reader handles the form structure properly. The xfdl file is IBM Lotus Forms, carried in Army systems for the routing and signature support it provides, which is why the Lotus Forms Viewer is its only reader.
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
- Altitude
- Azimuth
- AztoHow
- AztoHow_1
- AztoHow_2
- AztoHow_3
- AztoHow_4
- AztoHow_5
- AztoHow_6
- AztoHow_7
- ContentArea1
- Deflect
- Deflect_1
- Deflect_2
- Deflect_3
- Deflect_4
- Deflect_5
- Deflect_6
- Deflect_7
- Distance
- Distance_1
- Distance_2
- Distance_3
- Distance_4
Where the signed form goes is settled by ATP 3-09.50 rather than by the office holding it — a named recipient, the unit administrative channel, or the individual's own file, depending on why it was raised. Retention likewise belongs to the records schedule for the series, which exists so documents are kept for as long as anyone might need them and no longer. Keep a copy before release; the original serves the file from then on, not you.
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. USAFAS 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 5698?
- WEAPONS LOCATION DATA
- Which edition is current?
- 05/01/2016
- Who is responsible for this form?
- USAFAS
- In which formats can it be downloaded?
- PDF, XFDL, PDF
Publisher notes
- 41-ITEM ALSO PRODUCED IN ELECTRONIC MEDIA