Every entry in the Defense records system exists because some decision needed a documented basis, and DD Form 1210 is one of those instruments: DD Form 1210, Laboratory Compaction Characteristics of Soil (Compaction Test), December 1999, created to Laboratory Compaction Characteristics of Soil (Compaction Test). The reason it carries a DD number rather than a service designation is structural — the Department maintains a single body of forms for matters that arise identically in every service, so that a record created in one component remains intelligible in another.
That decision has consequences you will notice. Because not stated prescribes the form for the Department as a whole, and not stated maintains it on the Department's behalf, the same blank passes between the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marine Corps, the Space Force, the Coast Guard when operating under Defense jurisdiction, the defense agencies and the combatant commands without translation. A clerk in one component reads a record created in another and finds the fields where they expect them.
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a form, the replacement takes effect across every component simultaneously, so an older copy is not merely locally out of date — it is out of date in every office that might receive it.
Work down the page in the printed order, and understand why the order exists. The identifying block establishes whose record this is and under what circumstances it arises. The body of the form then answers questions that are only meaningful once that context is fixed. The signature block comes last because a certification signed before the entries are complete certifies nothing.
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.
Where a specific field is genuinely unclear, the instructions printed on the form come first and not stated governs where the two do not agree.
Download the form
What you can download: PDF. The form runs 1 pages and asks for approximately 164 entries. The plurality of formats is deliberate: Defense distribution has never been able to assume one operating environment across the whole force.
Two states of the same page circulate, and the reason is worth knowing. In the fillable pdf, the boxes are real fields holding real data; in the printable pdf, the boxes are drawings. Where a record will cross components — as Department records regularly do — the typed version is the safer artifact. Each scan, each forwarding, each reproduction costs handwriting a little legibility, and the office that finally files the record is rarely the office that received it first.
What the form asks for
- 1. Project.
- 2. Excavation number.
- 3. Sample number.
- 4. Date.
- 5. Layers.
- Blows per layer.
- 6. Weight of tamper (pounds).
- 7. Height of drop (inches).
- 8. Specific gravity of solids (Gs).
- 9. Diameter of mold (inches).
- 10. Volume of soil sample. Press space bar to mark X in first box if 0.0333 cubic feet or second box if 0.075 cubic feet.
- 11. Run number, column 1.
- 12. Weight of mold + wet soil (grams).
- 13. Weight of mold (grams).
- 14. Weight of wet soil (12 - 13) (grams).
- 15. Wet unit weight (pcf).
- 16. Tare number (run 1, column 1).
- a. Weight of tare = wet soil (grams).
- b. Weight of tare + dry soil (grams).
- c. Weight of water (Ww) (a - b) (grams).
- d. Weight of tare (grams).
- e. Weight of dry soil (Ws) (grams) (b - d).
- f. Water content (w = Ws/Ws x 100) (percent).
- 16. Tare number (run 1, column 2).
The completed form goes to the office named in not stated or in local implementing procedure, and it is worth keeping a copy before it goes. On a Department form the destination is frequently outside your own chain — another service, a defense agency, a joint staff — and recovering a document that has crossed an organizational boundary is a slower business than retrieving one from a file down the hall.
Cross-referenced documents are found by series and number, with nothing further required. That the DD sequence is unified across the Department means a cited number identifies one form and no other, which is the practical payoff of centralizing the numbering in the first place.
It helps to see the DA and DD sequences as what they are: separate registries with separate custodians. One serves a single service under a service proponent, the other serves the Department under not stated or an equivalent office, and neither was ever indexed against the other. A number that appears in both systems points to two unrelated documents, which is why reading the prefix comes before reading the digits.
Editions change for reasons that originate above the form itself. The prescribing directive is reissued and the form follows; the information the Department needs to collect changes and the fields change with it; the statutory notice language is amended and every form carrying that notice is republished. None of these events announces itself to the person who downloaded a copy last year, which is why confirming not stated at the moment of download is the only reliable check available to you.
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 1210?
- DD Form 1210, Laboratory Compaction Characteristics of Soil (Compaction Test), 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?