DD Form 1638 occupies a particular place in Defense recordkeeping. Its title is DD Form 1638, Report of Disposition of Contractor Inventory, October 1986., and it exists to Report of Disposition of Contractor Inventory. What the DD prefix records is an administrative judgment made long before your copy was printed: this transaction was determined to be common to the whole Department rather than peculiar to one service, and so the documentation of it was standardized at Department level.
This is why the arrangement matters to you rather than only to the archivists. not stated governs the form throughout the Department, with not stated as the responsible office, so the record you create is legible outside your own component. Joint assignments, agency details and cross-service transactions all depend on that: the paperwork does not have to be reconstructed each time it crosses a boundary.
You are looking for edition not stated, listed as not stated. Department-wide supersession is a single event rather than a rollout, which is what distinguishes edition currency on a DD form from the same question on a service publication: nobody anywhere is still accepting the previous version out of habit.
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.
Unclear entries are resolved from the printed instructions first and from not stated where the two texts diverge.
Download the form
What you can download: PDF. The form runs 1 pages and asks for approximately 149 entries. The plurality of formats is deliberate: Defense distribution has never been able to assume one operating environment across the whole force.
Fillable and printable are not two presentations of one file but two different objects. One holds your entries as structured data within the document; the other is a static picture meant to meet a pen. Since a DD form frequently moves outside the organization that created it, the durability of the entry matters more here than on a record that stays in one drawer. Typed text reproduces indefinitely; handwriting degrades at every copy.
What the form asks for
- Section 1, Summary. Enter Industrial Plant Equipment Cases for On Hand Begining of Report Period
- Enter Industrial Plant Equipment Cases for Adjustments
- Enter Industrial Plant Equipment Cases for Receipts
- Enter Industrial Plant Equipment Line Items for On Hand Begining of Report Period
- Enter Industrial Plant Equipment Line Items for Adjustments
- Enter Industrial Plant Equipment Line Items for Receipts
- Enter Industrial Plant Equipment Acquisition Cost for On Hand Begining of Report Period
- Enter Industrial Plant Equipment Acquisition Cost for Adjustments
- Enter Industrial Plant Equipment Acquisition Cost for Receipts
- Enter Other Contractor Inventory Cases For On Hand Begining of Report Period
- Enter Other Contractor Inventory Cases For ADJUSTMENTS
- Enter Other Contractor Inventory Cases For RECEIPTS
- Enter Other Contractor Inventory Line Items For On Hand Begining of Report Period
- Enter Other Contractor Inventory Line Items For ADJUSTMENTS
- Enter Other Contractor Inventory Line Items For RECEIPTS
- Enter Other Contractor Inventory Acquisition Cost For On Hand Begining of Report Period
- Enter Other Contractor Inventory Acquisition Cost For ADJUSTMENTS
- Enter Other Contractor Inventory Acquisition Cost For RECEIPTS
- Enter Total Cases for On Hand Begining of Report Period
- Enter Total Cases for ADJUSTMENTS
- Enter Total Cases for RECEIPTS
- Enter Total Line Items for On Hand Begining of Report Period
- Enter Total Line Items for ADJUSTMENTS
- Enter Total Line Items for RECEIPTS
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.
Forms referenced inside this one are located by number alone, and that simplicity is a direct product of Department-level numbering. Because the DD sequence is maintained centrally and not duplicated by service, a number is a complete address: one number, one document, throughout the Defense establishment.
Where a service form is cited in the same instruction, the two numbering systems should not be read across. DA numbering belongs to the Army and is administered by an Army proponent; DD numbering belongs to the Department and is administered by not stated or an equivalent Department office. The systems developed separately and were never harmonized, so identical digits in each identify two documents with nothing in common. The prefix, not the number, tells you which system you are in.
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.
What you have here is the document and a description of it, which is a different thing from guidance. This page is not an organ of the Department, gives no legal or procedural advice, and makes no representation about the outcome of any filing; the offices that administer the requirement are the only ones positioned to answer that. Applicability, eligibility and procedural questions belong to not stated, to your servicing personnel office, or to the office designated in not stated.
Questions and answers
- What is DD Form 1638?
- DD Form 1638, Report of Disposition of Contractor Inventory, October 1986.
- Which edition is current?
- Not stated by the publisher
- Who is responsible for this form?
- Not stated
- In which formats can it be downloaded?