Frequently asked questions
About the Vault
Everything opens right in your browser, with nothing to install, and it should display and read faster than a dedicated PDF reader.
- PDF or EPUB
- Every manual comes both ways. The PDF is the original document, page for page, either as it was exported or scanned from original prints. The EPUB reflows the text to fit your screen, which makes it far easier to read on mobile devices. If you switch between them in the reader, you can keep your place.
- Downloads
- Every file is available for download. PDFs are all properly OCR'd so that text is selectable, copyable, and searchable. EPUBs are compatible with a variety of reading software and hardware.
- Search
- On site, a more powerful search tool gives you additional ability to search by titles, TOCs, and filters to narrow results by branch, publication type, function, and collection.
- Citations
- Manuals lean on each other constantly. When one cites another, that citation is a link: follow it to the manual it names, or see which other publications cite the one you're reading.
How Search Works
Search reads every page of every publication, then ranks results by where your words were found:
- Title and designation. A manual named for your subject comes first.
- Table of contents. A chapter or section on it comes next.
- Body text. Any page that discusses it.
- Appendices. Back matter comes last.
Current editions also outrank older versions of the same publication.
To look in one place only, choose Title or Body text under the search bar. A body text search ranks on the text alone, which brings up manuals that cover a subject without naming it in their title.
If you know the military acronyms and terminology, use them: CAS also finds "close air support". If you don't, concepts work too. Once you find a manual that covers the skills and information you're looking for, it will reference other manuals, and you can explore from there.
Search tools
| Try | What it does |
|---|---|
| "pace count" | Quotation marks match the exact phrase. |
| FM 3-21.8 | A designation goes straight to that publication. |
| title:sniper | Searches titles only. |
| toc:ambush | Searches tables of contents only. |
| "pace count" title:patrolling | Combine them to narrow a search. |
How Military Manuals Work
Every publication has a designation: a type, a subject number and a sequence number.
The type tells you what kind of publication it is. Each service publishes its own family, from statements of principle down to how to maintain a single piece of equipment:
| Kind | Types | What it covers | In the Vault |
|---|---|---|---|
| Doctrine | ADP, MCDP, AFDP | Principles: what the force believes and why. | 19 / 17 / 29 |
| Joint | JP | How the services operate together. | 138 |
| Field manuals | FM, MCWP | How units fight and operate. | 2,000 / 90 |
| Techniques and reference | ATP, MCRP, MCTP | Detailed methods, procedures and reference data. | 220 / 146 / 57 |
| Training | TC | How to train a task. | 138 |
| Technical manuals | TM | How to run and maintain the gear. | 840 |
By branch: Army 3,580, Marine Corps 335, Navy 152, Joint 149, Air Force 49. Multiservice publications count under each service that issued them.
The subject number mostly follows the staff functions: 1 personnel, 2 intelligence, 3 operations, 4 logistics, 5 plans, 6 command and communications. Army manuals from before about 2001 number by branch instead: FM 5 engineers, FM 6 field artillery, FM 7 infantry, FM 21 every-soldier skills, FM 23 weapons.
Manuals are rewritten every few years and often renumbered: FM 21-76 Survival became FM 3-05.70, then ATP 3-50.21. A change (C1, C2) updates pages without a new edition. The Vault keeps many older editions of certain manuals.
It is sorted into four collections: Current Doctrine (726), Recent Archive (1,787), Lessons Learned (71) and Historic, before 1980 (1,631).