Consider what a Department-level form is for. DD Form 1208 — DD Form 1208, Specific-Gravity Tests, December 1999 — was established to Specific Gravity Tests, and it was placed in the DD sequence because the underlying transaction occurs throughout the Defense establishment in substantially the same shape. Standardizing the record was cheaper and more reliable than letting six services each design their own.
The practical effect of Department-level issue is interoperability. not stated establishes the requirement across the Defense enterprise; not stated keeps the document current for all of it. No service maintains its own variant, which means a completed record travels between components — service to agency, agency to joint command — and arrives in a format the receiving office already knows how to read.
Current edition: not stated, status not stated. Understand why that date is worth attention here. When the Department reissues a form, the replacement takes effect across every component simultaneously, so an older copy is not merely locally out of date — it is out of date in every office that might receive it.
The form is laid out top to bottom in a sequence that reflects how the record will be read, not merely how it was drawn. Identification comes first because everything below it is understood in relation to a named person, unit or transaction; substantive entries follow; certification closes the document because certification attests to what precedes it. Filling out of order tends to produce internal inconsistencies — an entry that made sense before the header was settled and does not afterward.
Before the first entry, compare the date printed on the form face with not stated. This is not bureaucratic fussiness. Editions change field numbering, and a receiving office working from the current layout may look for information where your copy does not put it. On a Department form the exposure is wider than usual: your record may be reviewed by an office in another service entirely, one with no reason to remember what the previous edition looked like.
Fill all of it, marking inapplicable items N/A. A record with gaps cannot later demonstrate whether the gap was a decision or an oversight, which is exactly the ambiguity documentation exists to remove. Dates go in the form's own format — on a document that crosses service lines, an ambiguous date is a real hazard rather than a pedantic one.
Understand what the Privacy Act Statement is doing on the page. It exists because collecting personal data from an individual triggers a duty to explain the collection: under what authority, for what purpose, to whom the information may routinely go, and whether you are obliged to answer. That explanation precedes the fields for the obvious reason — afterwards it is merely a notice, beforehand it is a basis for deciding.
What the signature block asks for is an act, not a text. Ink on a printed copy performs that act; a digital signature bound to your credential performs it electronically, CAC-based in most Defense systems. Typing your name performs nothing, since anyone with the file could type the same characters. Enter the date at the same moment: the certification is a statement about a point in time and needs one recorded.
Recurring defects have a pattern to them, and it is mostly the pattern of a record that cannot be relied on: an edition that does not match, gaps that cannot be interpreted, entries that cannot be read after scanning, dates that could mean two things, and a certification nobody executed. For an ambiguous field, read the form's own instruction, then not stated, which controls.
Download the form
Formats available: PDF, across 1 pages and about 87 fields.
Every format is free, as published government documents are. A note on tools, though — the interactive field layer that makes a fillable pdf useful is precisely the part browser viewers handle least reliably. Save the file, open it in a full pdf reader, and the fields behave as the form's designer intended.
What the form asks for
- 1. Project.
- 2. Date.
- 3. Boring number.
- 4. Job number.
- 5. Excavation number.
- 6. Specific gravity of solids. Flask calibration data. a. Flask number.
- b. Clean, dry weight (grams).
- c. Flask plus water weight (grams).
- d. Observed temperature (degrees Celsius).
- Determination data. f. Dish number, column 1.
- Dish number, column 2.
- Dish number, column 3.
- g. Weight of dish + dry soil (grams), column 2.
- g. Weight of dish + dry soil (grams), column 3.
- h. Weight of dish (grams), column 2.
- h. Weight of dish (grams), column 3.
- h. Weight of dish (grams), column 1.
- i. Weight of dry soil (Ws) (grams), column 2.
- i. Weight of dry soil (Ws) (grams), column 3.
- i. Weight of dry soil (Ws) (grams), column 1.
- j. Weight of flask + water + immersed soil (Wbws) (grams), column 2.
- j. Weight of flask + water + immersed soil (Wbws) (grams), column 3.
- k. Temperature of water (Tx) (degrees Celsius), column 2.
- k. Temperature of water (Tx) (degrees Celsius), column 1.
Submission follows not stated and whatever local instruction supplements it. Make a copy before the original leaves. Department forms travel across organizational lines by design, and the administrative distance that makes them useful is the same distance that makes tracing a lost one difficult.
When DD Form 1208 cites another form, the citation is self-sufficient. The DD series is a single sequence administered at Department level, so the number resolves to exactly one document without any need to establish which component issued it — a convenience that exists only because the sequence was never allowed to fork.
Procedures that touch both Department and service processes will cite forms from both sequences, and the coincidence of numbers between them is exactly that — coincidence. An Army proponent maintains the DA series for the Army; not stated or another Department office maintains the DD series for the whole Department. Two independent registries, two independent numbering runs, no correspondence at any value.
Understanding why editions change explains why checking them is not optional. Revision follows directive reissue, changes in what data is required, and amendments to mandatory notice text — decisions made at Department level and communicated through publication rather than notification. The file you saved does not update itself, so the edition date at download is what you rely on.
The role of this page is narrow and worth stating plainly. It makes a published Defense form available and explains its structure. It does not advise, does not interpret policy for your circumstances, and cannot indicate how any office will treat a completed copy — those judgments rest with the authorities that own the process. Direct such questions to not stated, to the administrative office that services you, or to the authority named in not stated.
Questions and answers
- What is DD Form 1208?
- DD Form 1208, Specific-Gravity Tests, 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?