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DD Form 553 — a Department of Defense document. Title of record: DD Form 553, Deserter/Absentee Wanted by the Armed Forces, March 2015. Stated purpose: Deserter/Absentee Wanted by the Armed Forces. Edition date not stated; status not stated.
Issued under not stated, with not stated as proponent. A DD number marks a Department-wide instrument: the same blank form serves every military department and the defense agencies, rather than one service alone.
The form reaches military personnel across the services, civilian employees of the Department, and the personnel and records specialists who receive it.
Timing of submission is fixed by not stated and by the implementing guidance of the submitting organization. What follows describes the blank document, not agency procedure.
Available formats: PDF. The form runs 3 pages and contains approximately 79 fillable fields.
Xfdl is present in the set. The format belongs to IBM Lotus Forms — long the Defense standard for electronic forms — and needs the matching viewer; pdf applications will report the file as unreadable.
All formats download free of charge. Pdf files open in any modern reader; interactive fields behave most predictably in a desktop application, less so in browser viewers.
What the form asks for
- 2. To (Local, state or federal law enforcement authority as indicated by Military Deserter Information Point).
- 3. From (organization or activity and place from which absent).
- e. Race. Press space bar to mark X if American Indian/Alaska native.
- X if Asian.
- X if Black or African American.
- X if native Hawaiian or Pacific islander.
- X if decline to respond.
- X if white.
- 1. Date prepared (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day, no dividers).
- 4. Distribution.
- 5. Absentee identification. a. Name (last, first, middle initial).
- b. Grade/rank/rate.
- c. Sex.
- d. Ethnicity. X first box if Hispanic or Latino, second box if not Hispanic or Latino, or third box if decline to respond.
- f. Place of birth (city, state, country).
- g. Date of birth (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- h. Height.
- i. Weight.
- j. Eye color. X first box if black, second box if blue, third box if brown, fourth box if green, fifth box if gray, sixth box if hazel, or seventh box if violet.
- k. Hair color. X first box if auburn, second box if black, third box if blond, fourth box if brown, fifth box if gray, sixth box if red, seventh box if silver, eighth box if white, or ninth box if bald.
- l. DIP control number.
- m. Branch of service.
- n. Social security number. Do not include dashes.
- o. Citizenship.
Completion runs in the order printed on the page: identifying data at the head, the body of the entry next, certification at the foot. Header data frequently governs what belongs in the fields below it.
The current edition is not stated. Superseded editions of DD forms are frequently rejected at the receiving office, since Department-wide forms change centrally and older layouts lose their field correspondence. Edition date appears in the lower corner of the printed blank.
Guidance for specific entries sits on the form face and in not stated; the directive is authoritative where the two do not agree.
The completed document moves to the office named in not stated or in local guidance. A retained copy is conventional practice.
Associated forms are traced by number within the series. Because the DD sequence is common to all military departments, no service qualifier is needed to identify a referenced form.
Some procedures pair a DD form with a service form. The two numbering systems are separate — service forms answer to a service proponent, DD forms to not stated or another Department office — and a matching number in each system means nothing.
Forms are reissued for several reasons: directive revision, changed data requirements, updated notice language. Confirming not stated at the moment of download covers the risk.
Scope of this page: distribution of a published form and description of its contents. It offers no legal guidance and no assurance regarding any particular submission. Direct procedural questions to not stated, to the servicing personnel office, or to the office designated in not stated.
Questions and answers
- What is DD Form 553?
- DD Form 553, Deserter/Absentee Wanted by the Armed Forces, March 2015
- Which edition is current?
- Not stated by the publisher
- Who is responsible for this form?
- Not stated
- In which formats can it be downloaded?