The Army wants leaders and on-base law enforcement to act with more urgency when a soldier goes missing. The service released rules last week that set immediate deadlines for informing family members and for bringing in local police when a soldier cannot be located.

Family members will now have to be notified within eight hours, and local police within three.

Army Secretary Dan Driscoll issued the rules in a policy directive last week. Under the new rules, commanders must change an absent soldier’s duty status to “absent-unknown” within three hours of a report of a missing soldier, a status that differs from Absent Without Leave, or AWOL, which indicates a soldier has intentionally fled.

With the changed duty status, officials will generate a “Be-On-The-Lookout,” or BOLO alert, to local

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