What This Field Means
Why the supporting source is considered reliable enough to establish or describe the unit.
This explains why the supporting evidence is entitled to carry weight: who issued it, what kind of record it is, and what claim it is competent to establish. It lets readers distinguish official organizational evidence from repetition by an unsourced secondary page.
How to Read It Correctly
Authority is not the same as certainty, popularity, recency, or a bare URL. Even an official source may be authoritative for one claim and silent or outdated for another.
Example
Official service lineage history, current command roster, or retained Joint Staff report.
Technical Specification
The database column is [USMIL-Unit].[Unit].[EvidenceAuthority]. Required narrative authority assessment identifying the issuer, source class, and evidentiary role. It is related to, but not identical with, the formal evidence-rank scale.
Describe the issuer, source class, and evidentiary role in enough detail to audit the judgment. Avoid generic labels such as “official source” when the specific authority and supported claim can be stated.
| Property | Definition or current value |
|---|---|
| Database column | EvidenceAuthority |
| Column order | 53 |
| SQL data type | nvarchar(256) |
| Kind of information | Evidence-derived text |
| Cardinality | One stored value per Unit row. |
| Required | Yes |
| Database default | No database default |
| Key or relationship | None |
| Database check constraint | ([CurrentStatus]=N'Planned' OR [CurrentStatus]=N'Status unknown' OR [CurrentStatus]=N'Historical' OR [CurrentStatus]=N'Inactive' OR [CurrentStatus]=N'Current') |
| Live population | 9341 of 9341 Unit records (100%) |
| Distinct nonblank values in the live table | 1045 |
| Live profile measured | September 2, 2026, 20:43 UTC |
Allowed Values and Definitions
No preset menu applies to this field. It stores an identifier, relationship, measurement, date, timestamp, or evidence-derived narrative. Valid content is governed by the SQL type, key relationship, nullability, retained evidence, and the field-specific recording rule above. A list of observed contents would be data, not a list of allowed options.
Missing, Unknown, and Conflicting Information
This column cannot be NULL in the Unit table. When the underlying fact is incomplete, the record must use an allowed explicit disposition or a supported evidence-derived statement. Required storage does not mean that every historical fact is known, and it never authorizes a guessed value.
Connections to Other Fields
- Primary Evidence — The principal retained source supporting the unit’s identity in this record.
- Unit Confidence — How certain the guide is that the unit identity and its major claims are correct.
- Authorization Document — The official order, directive, roster, law, or other record that supports the unit’s creation or recognition.
- Authorizing Authority — The department, service, command, law, order, or official body that established or recognized the organization.
- Process Version — The documented research or review method that produced the present record.