U.S. Army changing dog tags for first time in 40 years (1 Viewer)

[BLReed]

Essentially the same,but on the new dog tags, the service member's Social Security number will be replaced with a randomly generated, 10-digit Department of Defense identification number.
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For the first time in 40 years, the U.S. Army is making changes to a century-old piece of hardware, dog tags, the identification implements that hang around each soldier's neck.

For a low-tech thing like the aluminum dog tag, the reason for the change is decidedly high-tech, the threat of identity theft. On the new dog tags, the service member's Social Security number will be replaced with a randomly-generated, 10-digit Department of Defense identification number.

"If you find a pair of lost ID tags you can pretty much do anything with that person's identity because you now have their blood type, their religion, you have their social, and you have their name. The only thing missing is their birth date and you can usually get that by Googling a person," Michael Klemowski, Soldiers Programs Branch chief, U.S. Army Human Resources Command, said in an Army press release.

The change was mandated in 2007, but it has taken the military this long to replace the Social Security number with the 10-digit idea number through a number of systems, Klemowski said.

While identity theft may be among the most impersonal of crimes, the dog tags are anything but that.

"Dog tags are highly personal items to warriors of every service and to their families as well," says a Library of Congress tribute to the dog tag produced in 2012. "The tag itself individualizes the human being who wears it, despite his or her role as a small part of a huge and faceless organization. While the armed forces demand obedience and duty to a higher cause, dog tags, hanging under service members' shirts and close to their chests, remind them of their individuality."

The tags became part of the Army field kit shortly before World War I. By July 1916, the Army was issuing two of the tags to each soldier, one that would stay with the remains of those lost in battle and one that would go to the burial unit, according to the Armed Forces History Museum.

The tags "bring comfort and help calm the fears of soldiers facing death," the Library of Congress tribute says, allowing them to know they would not be forgotten or become an unknown casualty.

Klemowski said the change would not be immediate for all soldiers.

"We are focusing first on the personnel who are going to deploy. If a soldier is going to deploy, they are the first ones that need to have the new ID tags," he said in the Army release.

 

[ucla1967]

When I served in the US Army from 1961 to 1964, our dog tags did not use our social security numbers. Instead, we had numbers that (I think) indicated whether we were volunteers or drafted and what number you were in each group. So, I was RA19717825 which stood for regular army (volunteers) and indicated that I was the 19 million plus soldier that had been regular army. Draftees has numbers that started with US and had higher numbers since there had been more of them.

 

[Go for Broke]

Wow Mike, your dog tag number is really imprinted in your mind. Kind of like me, still remembering the Pledge of Allegiance and songs we used to sing after in school, America the Beautiful or God Bless America. I can also do the theme song from Giligan's Island.

 

[Leadmen]

The Marine Corps used seven digit numbers, no ss number. I still remember mine from 50 years ago. (maybe because it it tattooed on my arm?:rolleyes2.

 

[BLReed]

.....Instead, we had numbers that (I think) indicated whether we were volunteers or drafted and what number you were in each group. So, I was RA19717825 which stood for regular army (volunteers) and indicated that I was the 19 million plus soldier that had been regular army...........

Not quite.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_number_%28United_States_Army%29

"The 11 through 19 million series (11 000 000 - 19 999 999) were issued to Regular Army enlisted personnel who had enlisted after 1940. The first two numbers were determined by what state a person was recruited from, the next six were an identifying number for the service member; thus, for each geographical area there was an available range of 999,999 service numbers. The various geographical number codes were as follows:

11: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont

12: Delaware, New Jersey, New York

13: Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia

14: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee

15: Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia

16: Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin

17: Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming

18: Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas

19: Alaska, Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington"

 

[ucla1967]

Wow Mike, your dog tag number is really imprinted in your mind. Kind of like me, still remembering the Pledge of Allegiance and songs we used to sing after in school, America the Beautiful or God Bless America. I can also do the theme song from Giligan's Island.

I guess there are a few things that all of us have imprinted on our minds over time. To be sure, my Army serial number is one of them more than 50 years later and, unlike Leadmen, I have no tattoos to remind me.

 

[ucla1967]

Not quite.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_number_%28United_States_Army%29

"The 11 through 19 million series (11 000 000 - 19 999 999) were issued to Regular Army enlisted personnel who had enlisted after 1940. The first two numbers were determined by what state a person was recruited from, the next six were an identifying number for the service member; thus, for each geographical area there was an available range of 999,999 service numbers. The various geographical number codes were as follows:

11: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont

12: Delaware, New Jersey, New York

13: Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia

14: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee

15: Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia

16: Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin

17: Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming

18: Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas

19: Alaska, Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington"

Thanks for the correct information, but I was hedging my comments with "I think." Clearly, I thought wrong. This is interesting stuff though. I knew that the guys who processed through "The Recruiting Main Station" in downtown Los Angeles with me on the day we went on active duty where issued sequential numbers around mine. In fact, I served with RA19717823, ...824, and ...826 through basic training at Fort Ord, Calif. and then for advanced Signals Intelligence training at Fort Devens, Mass. I can only remember two of their full names: Lyle Larsen, George ?, and Bob Sheets, all of whom were from California. Since I was born and raised in Oregon and enlisted after having lived in California for a year, the geographic codes were determined by, as you said, your state of residence at the time of your enlistment and not your place of birth.

I wonder if the "US" serial numbers for draftees had a similar geographic code system? Also, I was under the impression that "US" stood for Universal Service rather than United States. Actually, I didn't know or serve with many draftees since their two years of active duty obligation did not lend itself to the long Army Security Agency schools we attended prior to deploying overseas. The three year Regular Army enlistees were able to have two years of post-school active duty while they would have had only one year, so they were clerk-typists, cooks, MPs, truck drivers, etc. for the most part.