You have arrived looking for DD Form 2024. Before you download, confirm this is the right document: DoD Security Classification Guide Data Elements. Full title: DD Form 2024, DoD Security Classification Guide Data Elements, July 1986.
Your second step is the edition, not stated, listed as not stated. Your third is scope. Because the number carries a DD prefix, you use the same blank as every other military department and defense agency; no service-specific version exists for you to hunt down.
After that, turn to timing. The requirement comes from not stated; the form is maintained by not stated. Local implementing instructions fill in the dates, so check with the office that will receive your copy.
Last in this stage, choose your method: complete it on screen, or print the blank form and fill it out in pen. The sections below take each route step by step.
Start at the header. Complete your identification before anything else, then work through the main entries, then finish at the certification. Skipping around causes contradictions between the top of the form and the bottom.
Your first action is verification. Find the edition date on the form and match it against not stated. A mismatch means you are working from a superseded printing, and because DD forms change Department-wide rather than service by service, the office receiving it will notice.
Look up an unclear item on the form face before anywhere else, then in not stated. Should the two texts conflict, the directive is the one you follow.
Download the form
Step one is picking the format. You have PDF to choose from, across 2 pages, with approximately 25 fields to complete.
Take the pdf if you are unsure. Then check which kind you have: if the boxes highlight when you click them, you have a fillable pdf and can type straight into it, and your entries save with the file. If nothing highlights, you have a printable pdf — send it to a printer and use black ink.
Go with the typed route whenever the choice is yours. Consider what happens after you submit: the copy gets scanned, forwarded and filed, and each pass costs handwriting some legibility. Block letters help if you are stuck with a pen.
You will not be charged for any of these; the whole set is free. Before you start entering data, save the file to your computer and open it there. Fields behave far more reliably in a desktop reader than in a browser preview.
What the form asks for
- 1. Reason for submission. Press space bar to mark X in first box if new guide, second box if revision, third box if reissuance, fourth box if biennial review, fifth box if cancellation, or sixth box if correction.
- Report Control Symbol.
- 2. Promulgating document. (Include type of document, activity, symbol or serial number and date. Do not include the subject of the document. If no promulgating document, state "none." Do not exceed 46 characters.).
- 3. Classification Guide Title. (Include the full title (if unclassified) and any short title. Do not exceed 134 characters.)
- 4. Classification guide date (2 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day. Do not exceed 6 characters).
- 5. Classification guide originator. (Activity which issued guide. Do not exceed 25 characters.)
- 6. Available through DTIC. X first box if B, second box if C, third box if D, fourth box if E, fifth box if F, sixth box if X, or seventh box if No.
- 7. Biennial review date (2 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day. Do not exceed 6 characters.)
- 8. Number of revisions and date of latest. (Show number of revisions first, then the date of latest revision as a 2 digit year followed by 2 digit month and 2 digit day. If no revisions have been made, so state. A reissued guide would have no revisions. Do not exceed 8 characters.)
- 9.a. Subject Matter Index Terms, line 1 (do not exceed 34 characters per line).
- 9.b. Subject Matter Index Terms.
- 9.c. Subject Matter Index Terms.
- 10. Classification of guide document. X first box if Top secret, second box if secret, third box if confidential, fourth box if unclassified, or fifth box if special access required (including if guide itself is classified).
- 11. Index source number. Enter existing number if guide is listed in Index.
- 12. Highest classification prescribed by guide: X first box if top secret, second box if secret, or third box if confidential.
- 13. The guide prescribes classification of information controlled within a Special Access Program. X first box if yes, second box if no.
- 14. Remarks.
- 15. Originator. a. Typed name (last, first, middle initial).
- 15.b. Title.
- 15.e. Date signed.
- 15.c. Office/agency department.
- 15.d. Signature.
- 16. Action Officer. a. Name (last, first, middle initial).
- 16.b. Telephone number (DSN if outside DC metropolitan area).
Now that it is complete, send it where not stated or your local procedure says it goes. Before you do, make yourself a copy — scan it or save the file elsewhere. It costs you nothing and saves you the whole exercise if the original goes missing.
If the form points you to another document, you can find it by number alone. DD numbering runs across the whole Department, so you do not need to work out which service issued it — one number, one form, everywhere.
Here is where people go wrong. They see a number in an instruction and download whichever form matches it. But DA and DD are separate systems — Army-specific in one case, Department-wide under not stated in the other — so check which series you were sent to before you take the file.
Do not archive this file and reuse it in a year. Forms are reissued as directives are revised, as data requirements shift, and as statutory notice text is amended. Your protection is simple: download fresh each time and confirm the edition date.
One thing this page does not do: tell you whether your submission will be accepted. We publish the document and explain how to complete it, and that is where our role ends. Nothing here is legal advice. Take questions about eligibility, applicability or procedure to not stated, to your servicing personnel office, or to the office named in not stated.
Questions and answers
- What is DD Form 2024?
- DD Form 2024, DoD Security Classification Guide Data Elements, July 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?