First, confirm you are on the right form. DA Form 2397-U carries the official title UNMANNED AIRCRAFT SYSTEM ACCIDENT REPORT - UASAR, and you use it to unmanned aircraft system accident report (uasar). Second, check the edition: the copy offered here is dated February 2010 and its publication status is not stated. Third, size up the job — 3 page(s) and about 200 entry fields, so you can decide whether to fill it now or set aside time.
Then work out your role. If the entries describe you, you fill them in and someone in the administrative section checks the result. If you handle records for others, you enter what they supply and pass the form along. In both cases the same two references govern you: OCSA maintains the form, and PAM 385-40 sets out the trigger for using it and the route it takes. Read that directive before you start when anything about your case is unusual.
Work from the top down, one block at a time. First the name — copy it from your official records rather than writing it the way you usually do. Then the identification number, then the unit, then today's date. Fill these before anything else. When the form reaches a file cabinet or a database, these are the entries someone searches on, so get them right before you worry about the rest.
Now for the body. Use tab to advance through the fields; the order was set when the form was built and following it keeps you from leaving gaps. Check boxes and option buttons take a click. Where the options are mutually exclusive, choosing one will clear another, which is how the group is meant to behave. As you type longer entries, watch the field edge. One-line fields do not wrap, and anything past the edge prints missing even when you can still read it on screen — when that happens, put the text in remarks or on a continuation sheet. Leave nothing blank because it does not apply; enter the mark that means it does not apply, so the reviewer knows you read the question.
Leave the signature until everything else is done. Sign by hand or by an approved electronic means, and remember that a form without a signature is a draft, however complete the entries. Where a second and third signature are required — reviewing official, approving authority, witness — go in the order the blocks appear, and each signer dates the form on the day of signing. Then go back to the top and read what you wrote. Look first for a mandatory field you passed over, then for transposed digits in your identification number, then for a date with the day and month inverted. If you started from a file you had used before, look also for entries left from that earlier use; nothing removes them but you.
Read the Privacy Act statement when it appears on the page, before you fill in the personal details it covers. It sets out the authority for collecting the information, the purpose behind it, the routine uses it may be put to, and whether your disclosure is required or voluntary. Then keep in mind what you have created — a completed copy carries personal data, and you handle and store it under the rules that apply to such records.
Download the form
Then choose a file to download. What you will see offered is PDF, XFDL, and the only question you need to answer is whether you are typing or writing. Type, and you want the fillable pdf, where the entry areas respond to your keyboard. Write, and you want the printable pdf, which you print empty and complete with a pen. The layout does not change between them, so pick whichever fits how you plan to work today.
Once the file is on your machine, open it deliberately. A pdf will usually launch in your browser, which reads well enough but does not always hold what you type; certain viewers display the fields and then discard your entries. Save the download to a folder, open it from there in a dedicated reader, and test one field and one save before you commit to filling the whole thing. If the xfdl file is what you need, install the IBM Lotus Forms Viewer first. No pdf reader and no word processor will open it.
Finally, note what the download costs you: nothing. You do not create an account, you do not enter an email address, and the file you receive is the published document with nothing added to it.
What the form asks for
- ACC_HOME
- ACC_MACOM
- ACC_UIC
- ACC_UNIT
- ACFT_DMG
- ACFT_SER
- AGL_A
- AGL_B
- ALL_ACFT
- APPROVE
- ATLS
- ATTACH
- A_CONC
- A_CON_N
- A_CON_Y
- A_FAC_A
- A_FAC_B
- A_FAC_C
- A_FAC_D
- A_FEMALE
- A_FLOWN
- A_INJURY_N
- A_INJURY_Y
- A_LAB_NEG
With the form signed, send it where PAM 385-40 tells you to send it — usually to the office it names, or through your unit administrative channel, or straight into your own record, depending on why you raised it. Keep a copy for yourself before it leaves your hands. How long the receiving office holds it is not your decision or theirs; the records schedule for the series settles that, and local habit does not override it.
Should the package need more than one document, search by series and number. Within the DA series, forms under the same proponent or the same prescribing directive tend to be required as a set, and a form referenced on the page you are filling usually accompanies it. Collect the continuations, covers and transmittals up front so the submission goes complete the first time.
The next time you open this form from your own files, check the edition date first. Revisions come from the proponent without warning to you, so the only reliable step is to hold your copy against the current edition before filling it in again. Records you already completed under a superseded edition stand, and you do not go back to rework them.
One last thing to be clear about before you download. What you get here is a copy of a published Department of the Army document. This site is not part of the Department of the Army, issues no forms of its own, and cannot tell you that any office will accept what you submit. Nothing written on this page is legal advice. When you are unsure about a particular entry, a requirement or whether you are eligible at all, ask OCSA or the administrative office that services your unit — they answer those questions and we do not.
Questions and answers
- What is DA Form 2397-U?
- UNMANNED AIRCRAFT SYSTEM ACCIDENT REPORT - UASAR
- Which edition is current?
- February 2010
- Who is responsible for this form?
- OCSA
- In which formats can it be downloaded?
- PDF, XFDL