You have arrived looking for DD Form 2863. Before you download, confirm this is the right document: National Call to Service (NCS), Election of Options. Full title: DD Form 2863, National Call to Service Election of Options, April 2006.
Next, check the edition. You want not stated, currently carried as not stated by the publisher. Then confirm the form applies to you — this is a Department of Defense form, so you use it whether you serve in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Space Force or Coast Guard under Defense jurisdiction.
Once you know the form fits, find out when you file it. not stated sets the requirement, and not stated maintains the form itself. Your own command or agency adds local timing on top of that, so ask your administrative office if the deadline matters to you.
Before you download, pick your approach — editable file or printed page. What follows covers the formats first, then the entries, then what you do afterward.
Begin at the top and move down. Enter your identifying data first, then the body of the form, then the signature block. The sequence is printed in that order because entries below frequently follow from entries above.
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 A mismatch means you are working from a superseded printing, and because DD forms change Department-wide rather than service by service, the office receiving it will notice.
Work through the fields one at a time and leave nothing blank. When a box does not apply to you, write N/A rather than skipping it, so the reviewer can see you read the question. Follow the date format printed beside each date field instead of the one you normally use.
Stop at the Privacy Act Statement and read it through. You will find the authority for the collection, the principal purpose, the routine uses, and whether disclosure is voluntary or mandatory. Read it now, while you still have the choice of what to disclose.
Finish with the certification. Print the form and sign in ink, or apply a digital signature with your CAC if the receiving office accepts one. Do not type your name in the signature box and consider it done; that is a name, not a signature. Date the block immediately after signing.
Run a final pass over the form. The errors that send it back are the same ones every time: old edition, gaps in required fields, unreadable handwriting on a scan, non-conforming dates, no signature or no date.
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
First, look at what you can download. The set covers PDF, the form runs 1 pages, and you will complete roughly 13 fields.
Handle xfdl in two steps. First confirm you have IBM Lotus Forms Viewer or a compatible reader on your machine; ordinary pdf software will report the file as broken. Once the viewer is running, download and fill the form.
Whichever you pick, you pay nothing — every format here is a free download. One last tip: open your pdf in a desktop reader rather than in a browser tab, because browser viewers sometimes drop the interactive fields you need.
What the form asks for
- 1. Enlistee Identification Data. a. Name (last, first, middle).
- 1.b. Social Security Number. Do not include dashes.
- 1.c. Date of enlistment (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- 1.d. Service.
- 2. Service Commitment. I am enlisting in the United States (list branch of service):
- 3. Incentive election. Initial Option a.
- 3. Initial option b.
- Maximum amount of student loans eligible for repayment.
- 3. Initial Option c.
- 3. Initial option d.
- 4. Certification and Acceptance. a. Signature of enlistee.
- 4.b. Date signed (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day).
- Press this Reset button to clear the data from all fields.
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.
Should you need a related form, look it up by its number. The DD sequence is Department-wide, which makes your search simple: no service qualifier, no branch-specific variant to track down.
Watch out for one trap here. If your instructions cite a DA form as well, do not assume the numbers are connected. DA numbering belongs to the Army alone; DD numbering belongs to the Department and is administered by not stated or another Department office. The same number in each system means two unrelated forms, so read the prefix before you download.
Come back and check the edition next time you need this form. Editions change when the prescribing directive is reissued, when the information collected changes, or when the required notice language is updated, and none of those events reaches you directly. Verifying not stated at the moment you download is the whole defence.
Finally, understand the limits of what you have read. This page distributes a published Department of Defense form and describes how to fill it out. It does not give legal or procedural advice, and it cannot promise any outcome for your particular case. For that, contact not stated, your administrative office, or the authority identified in not stated.
Questions and answers
- What is DD Form 2863?
- DD Form 2863, National Call to Service Election of Options, April 2006
- Which edition is current?
- Not stated by the publisher
- Who is responsible for this form?
- Not stated
- In which formats can it be downloaded?