The reason DA Form 5941-R looks the way it does is that a file has to speak for itself. Officially COMSEC MATERIAL DISPOSITION RECORD (LRA), it serves to comsec material disposition record (lra), and the record it produces outlasts the people and the circumstances behind it. Edition 08/01/1990, status ACTIVE, is the version published here: 1 page(s), close to 161 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 CCSLA, which maintains and revises it. Whether you raise it, and where it goes once signed, is settled by (TB 380-41). That division is the reason a form can outlive several changes in the process it serves.
The heading blocks come first because the record is retrieved by them, not read into. Name as official records spell it, identification number, unit, date of preparation — those four are the index, and everything below them is content that only surfaces once the index has done its work. A form filed under a name written casually is not lost in principle, only in practice, which amounts to the same thing.
Much of the form's behaviour follows from its being a fixed page. Tab order was set at build time along the reading sequence, which is why tabbing catches boxes a pointer passes over. Exclusive groups release one choice when another is made because a record cannot carry two answers to a single question. Single-line fields refuse to wrap because every entry must print where the layout expects it — text beyond the width is lost at the margin, visible on screen to the end. That is what remarks areas and continuation sheets are for. Marking a field that does not apply matters for a related reason: emptiness is ambiguous, and a reviewer reading the file later cannot distinguish an omission from a decision.
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.
Behind the Privacy Act statement is a requirement that anyone asked for personal data be told, in advance, under what authority it is sought, for what purpose, who else routinely sees it, and whether refusal is possible. Reading it after completing the fields defeats its function. And the completed form is itself a personal record from that point on, subject to the handling rules such records carry.
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.
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. The xfdl format comes from IBM Lotus Forms, used across Army systems because of the routing and signature functions built into it, and it opens in the Lotus Forms Viewer alone.
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
- CONTROL
- COPIES
- CRYPTO
- ContentArea1
- DEST
- DEST_1
- DEST_10
- DEST_11
- DEST_12
- DEST_13
- DEST_14
- DEST_15
- DEST_16
- DEST_17
- DEST_18
- DEST_19
- DEST_2
- DEST_20
- DEST_21
- DEST_22
- DEST_23
- DEST_3
- DEST_4
- DEST_5
The routing in (TB 380-41) 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.
Forms cluster by series and number for the same reason files do: shared proponency and a shared prescribing directive usually mean a shared process. So a document in the DA series referenced on the face of another is generally part of the same transaction, and continuation sheets, cover sheets and transmittals belong to the package from the outset rather than arriving after a query.
An edition marks the form at a point in a process that keeps moving, and the date printed on the page is what distinguishes one from another. Since a saved file never announces its own obsolescence, compare its date against the current edition before using it again. Prior executions remain valid: the change applies forward, and a record is read against the edition it was written under.
A word on where this page sits. These are reproductions of published Department of the Army documents, made available by an independent site with no official role and no authority to issue forms. The structure described above — proponent, prescribing directive, records schedule — exists apart from this site entirely, which is why nothing written here is legal advice and why acceptance by any office is not something that can be promised. Put questions of entry, requirement or eligibility to CCSLA or to the administrative office servicing your unit.
Questions and answers
- What is DA Form 5941-R?
- COMSEC MATERIAL DISPOSITION RECORD (LRA)
- Which edition is current?
- 08/01/1990
- Who is responsible for this form?
- CCSLA
- In which formats can it be downloaded?
- PDF, XFDL, PDF
Publisher notes
- 41-ITEM ALSO PRODUCED IN ELECTRONIC MEDIA,