DD Form 2168 occupies a particular place in Defense recordkeeping. Its title is DD Form 2168, Application for Discharge of Member or Survivor of Member, April 2010 (Corrected for OMB expiration and Army address), and it exists to Application for Discharge of Member or Survivor of Member of Group Certified to Have Performed Active Duty with the Armed Forces of the U.S.. 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.
Every field takes an entry, N/A included. The reason is evidentiary rather than clerical: a completed record is supposed to show what was asked and what was answered, and blank space records neither. On dates, follow the format printed beside the field. Conventions vary between components, and a joint document is read by people who do not share your habits.
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.
Signature is the point at which a completed form becomes a certification, and the requirement follows from that. On paper it means ink in the designated block; electronically it means a credentialed digital signature, ordinarily applied with a Common Access Card in software that supports it. A name typed into the signature field is data, not an act — it demonstrates nothing about who entered it. The date beside the signature fixes when the certification was made, which is why a signed but undated block is treated as incomplete.
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
What you can download: PDF. The form runs 2 pages and asks for approximately 44 entries.
Xfdl appears in the set for reasons of institutional inertia rather than preference. It is the IBM Lotus Forms format, once the Department's electronic forms standard and deployed widely enough that it outlived the decision to move on. IBM Lotus Forms Viewer or an equivalent client opens it; a pdf application will not.
All of it downloads without charge. Where care is needed is in the reader you choose. A fillable pdf depends on field properties that desktop applications honour and browser previews frequently ignore, so work locally rather than inside a browser window.
What the form asks for
- Section 1. Group member data. 1.a. Member's name: last, first, middle, and maiden, if any.
- 1.b. Alias(es).
- 2. Social Security Number. Do not include dashes.
- 3. Date of birth: 4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day, no spacers.
- 4.a. Present street address (include apartment number).
- 4.b. City.
- 4.c. County.
- 4.d. State.
- 4.e. ZIP code.
- Section 2 - Service group data to support claim. 5. Name of group served with.
- 6. Identification number.
- 7. Highest grade/rank/rating held.
- 8. Highest pay grade (or actual pay).
- 9. Entry into Service. a. Date (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- 9.b. Place (include city and state of military installation).
- 10.Actual military service before/after this service. a. Dates (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- 10.b. Department(s).
- 11. Home of record at time of entry. a. Street address (include apartment number).
- 11b. City.
- 11c. County.
- 11d. State.
- 11e. ZIP code.
- 12. Grade/rank/rating at time of entry.
- 13. Military installation where ordered to report (include city and state).
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.
When DD Form 2168 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.
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.
A form is downstream of the policy that requires it, and revision usually starts there: a directive is reissued, a collection requirement is altered, notice language is updated by statute. The form is republished as a consequence. Since none of that reaches individual users, an archived copy quietly becomes wrong, and verifying not stated each time you download is the whole remedy.
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 2168?
- DD Form 2168, Application for Discharge of Member or Survivor of Member, April 2010 (Corrected for OMB expiration and Army address)
- Which edition is current?
- Not stated by the publisher
- Who is responsible for this form?
- Not stated
- In which formats can it be downloaded?