Every entry in the Defense records system exists because some decision needed a documented basis, and DD Form 453-1 is one of those instruments: DD Form 453-1, Travel Order, August 1984, created to Travel Order. 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.
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.
The edition in force is not stated, carried by the publisher as not stated, and edition discipline is stricter on a Department form than most people expect, precisely because supersession happens everywhere at once. There is no interval during which one service still works from the previous layout while another has moved on.
The sequence printed on the form is the sequence in which a reviewer will read it, and the two should agree. Header data frames every entry below it; the substantive fields depend on that frame; the certification stands at the end because its whole function is to vouch for what came before. Entries made out of sequence commonly contradict entries made earlier.
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.
For an ambiguous field, read the form's own instruction, then not stated, which controls.
Download the form
The set published here is PDF, covering 1 pages with roughly 26 fields. More than one format survives because the Department serves users under very different conditions, from a desk with current software to a location where a printer is the only reliable output.
The difference between a fillable and a printable pdf is a difference in what the file contains. A fillable release carries an interactive layer: each box is a defined field with a name and a data type, and what you type is stored as data inside the document. A printable release has no such layer — it is an image of the page, and the only place your answers can go is onto paper. The distinction matters downstream, because a Department record often gets scanned and forwarded several times before it reaches its final file, and typed characters survive that chain in a way pen strokes do not.
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
- Payment of travel allowances is authorized pursuant to 10 U S C Section 847 and 28 U S C Section 18 21. You should travel from: enter location
- in sufficient time to arrive at: enter location, on the date and time specified. You will be paid fees and expenses for attendance at the specified hearing and travel directly to and from that place.
- You may travel by: press space bar to mark X if rail.
- Mark X if commercial or military aircraft.
- Mark X if by bus.
- Mark X if privately owned automobile.
- X first box if you have or second box if have not been given a Government Transportation Request.
- If you travel by private automobile, you will be reimbursed at the rate of 20 cents per mile or: enter other amount
- plus the cost of necessary parking fees, bridge, ferry and other highway tolls incurred while traveling under this travel order. The total reimbursement will be limited to the cost of travel by the usual mode of common carrier, including per diem. Receipts and ticket stubs will be required to support your claim for cost of transportation and subsistence for each item in excess of 15 dollars or: enter amount.
- Press space bar to mark X if: you will be traveling to a high cost area. The travel regulations designate certain cities as high cost areas. Because your attendance requires travel to one of these cities, you will be authorized an actual expense allowance instead of a per diem allowance. You will be reimbursed for the actual expenses incurred, not to exceed the maximum amount for the city involved. The expenses may include lodgings, meals, tips to waiters, bellboys, maids, porters, personal laundry, pressing and dry cleaning, local transportation including usual tips, between places of lodging and duty, and other necessary expenses.
- You must itemize your daily actual expenses on your claim and receipts for lodging and any items over 15 dollars or: enter amount, are required.
- Mark X if you will not be traveling to a high-cost area. Because you are not traveling to a high-cost area, you will be entitled to a per diem allowance to cover your expenses for lodging, meals, and incidentals.
- While traveling and attending the specified hearing within the continental United States, you will be authorized a per diem equal to the daily average you pay for lodging, plus 23 dollars or (enter amount) per day for meals and incidentals, rounded off to the next dollar.
- If the resulting amount is more than the maximum per diem allowable, which is 50 dollars or (enter amount), then you will be reimbursed only the maximum per diem authorized. You are required to state on your reimbursement claim that the per diem claimed is based on the average cost to you for lodging while on required travel within the continental United States during the period covered by the claim. Receipts are required for lodging. The per diem allowance for travel overseas is based on rates set by the Department of State or by the Department of Defense, and you will be reimbursed the amount specified for the particular overseas area involved.
- You are entitled to an attendance fee of 30 dollars or (enter amount) per day under 28 U S C section 18 21.
- Address any inquiries regarding this matter to: line 1.
- Address inquiries to, line 2.
- This is travel order number:
- Dated:
- Issued by headquarters:
- T D N Accounting Citation:
- Typed name of authenticating official.
- For the commander: typed name of approving official.
- Signature of approving official.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A word on what this page is. It distributes a published Department of Defense document and describes what the document contains and how it is completed. It is not the issuing authority, does not speak for one, and offers no legal advice; nothing written here determines whether a particular submission will be accepted, because that determination belongs entirely to the office receiving it. Questions of applicability, eligibility or procedure go to not stated, to your servicing personnel office, or to the office identified in not stated.
Questions and answers
- What is DD Form 453-1?
- DD Form 453-1, Travel Order, August 1984
- Which edition is current?
- Not stated by the publisher
- Who is responsible for this form?
- Not stated
- In which formats can it be downloaded?