Find results all of the words (Search Tips)

Collections Descriptions

with the exact phrase
with at least one of the words
without the words
File Format  return results of the file format
Occurrences Return results where my terms occur

Search Tips

Below are a few tips to enhance your research. Need help or have a question? Contact the DTIC Reference Team at 1-800-CALL-DTIC (1-800-225-3842) or send an email to dtic.belvoir.us.mbx.reference@mail.mil.

Boolean Operators connect and define the relationship between search terms. Narrow or broaden your results by using the three Boolean Operators AND, OR and NOT. 
      The phrase radar calibration will bring up the same results as radar AND calibration.

      radar OR calibration will find all content containing either one or both of these terms.

      bridge NOT cable will find all content containing bridge except content that mentions cable.
Boosting is a boolean OR query with two terms, used to make one term more relevant than another. This is done by entering the higher weighed term (or phrase/group) followed by the boost operator ^, a value, then another term. The default boost value is 1, but can be any positive number, up to 15. Boosts above 15 will not have much impact. Boosts between 0 and less than 1 will reduce the relevance. 

	quick^2 foxes will find all documents about foxes, especially quick foxes. 
	(quick is 2 times more important than foxes)
Boosts can also be applied to phrases or to groups (use quotes "" around the phrase): 
	"jeep tank"^5 truck  (the phrase "jeep tank" is 5 times more important than truck)

	"light weapon"^4 army (the phrase "light weapon" is 4 times more important than army)

Note: Boosting will work correctly only in the main search box or the search box for "all the words".

Nesting is used to create complex queries by grouping AND, OR, and NOT statements using parentheses. 

        bridge AND (suspension OR concrete) NOT cable will bring up
        results for bridge suspension, or concrete bridge, but not cable bridge.
Proximity Operator finds records with terms in proximity to each other throughout a document whether they are in the same field or not when the operator ~ is used. A proximity search allows us to specify a maximum edit distance of words in a phrase (enclosed in quotes " ") 

	"radar calibration"~5 this will change the proximity to five words
Note: The Proximity Operator will work correctly only in the main search box or the search box for "all the words".
The Stemming feature finds different forms of a searched root word. For example, a search for "fund" (no quotes) finds "fund", "funds", "funded", "funding". This feature is on by default.
To turn off stemming and find an Exact Match, enclose the word or phrase in quotes. 
	A search for "catalog" will return results based on the term catalog, but not cataloging, 
	cataloged, cataloger.

	A search for "long range" will return results based on the phrase "long range", but not 
	"longer range","longest range", or "long ranges".
Exception: The following list of special symbols are removed from a search with stemming turned off:
	+ - && || ! ( ) { } [ ] ^ " ~ * ? : \<>
For example: the non-stemmed search for "plan*" will return results based on the term "plan ". This is because we reserve the * symbol for a special meaning (wildcard). 
	A regular search for plan* returns plant, plane, plants, planter.
Truncation is used to search a portion of a word by using an asterisk. The asterisk is used to represent the rest of the term, which will retrieve results that include words that begin with the entered letters.

	terror* finds terrorism, terrorist, and terror
Wildcards are another way to return results that match a combination of characters. Replace a single character in a search term with a question mark. 

	defen?e finds defense and defence
Combining Truncation with Wildcards finds records that meet the conditions of the search terms that have a wildcard(s) or are truncated. 
        qu?ck bro* finds quick brown and quack brother
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