UCMJ Article 115: Communicating Threats

A threat carries weight in the armed forces that it might not carry in civilian life. A barracks where service members fear one another, or a workplace emptied by a bomb warning, is a unit that cannot do its job. Article 115 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice addresses that harm directly. It does not punish the carrying out of a threat, which is reached by the assault, arson, and homicide articles, but the communicating of one. The injury the article guards against is the fear itself and the disruption that fear produces, even when the speaker never lifts a hand.

Article 115 is codified at 10 U.S.C. 915. The provision now numbered 915 is a product of the Military Justice Act of 2016, which took effect on 1 January 2019. Before that rewrite, threat offenses were prosecuted under the general article, Article 134, and the section number 915 belonged to malingering. The 2019 reorganization pulled communicating threats out of the general article and gave it a dedicated statute with its own elements and its own graduated punishments. A description that still routes a threat charge through Article 134, or that treats Article 115 as a single undifferentiated offense, no longer reflects the statute.

What the article covers

The current Article 115 defines three distinct offenses, and the distinction matters because the maximum punishment for one is more than three times that of another.

The first is the general threat: wrongfully communicating a threat to injure the person, property, or reputation of another. This is the ordinary case, reaching a spoken, written, or electronic message that conveys an intent to harm someone, damage their belongings, or ruin their standing.

The second is the dangerous-materials threat: wrongfully communicating a threat to injure a person or property by use of an explosive, a weapon of mass destruction, a biological or chemical agent, substance, or weapon, or a hazardous material. A bomb threat phoned into a building, or a message claiming that a chemical agent has been planted, falls here. The law treats this category far more seriously because of the evacuations, searches, and panic such a threat sets in motion regardless of whether any device exists.

The third is the false dangerous-materials threat: maliciously communicating a threat the speaker knows to be false, concerning injury to a person or property by the same explosives, weapons of mass destruction, agents, or hazardous materials. Here the gravamen is the deliberate hoax. The speaker is not warning of a real danger and is not even bluffing about one he might carry out; he is knowingly inventing a danger to cause alarm and disruption.

What the government must prove

For the general threat, the prosecution must prove that the accused communicated a certain threat to injure the person, property, or reputation of another, and that the communication was wrongful. A threat for this purpose is a declaration of intent to wrongfully injure, conveyed by any means. The government need not prove that the accused actually intended to carry the threat out, nor that the accused had the present ability to do so. What matters is that the words or conduct, taken in context, expressed an intent to injure. A statement made plainly as a joke, idle talk understood by all present as harmless, or words that no reasonable listener would take as a serious expression of intent are not threats, and the wrongfulness element is where that line is drawn.

For the dangerous-materials threat, the prosecution must additionally prove that the threatened means was an explosive, weapon of mass destruction, biological or chemical agent, substance, or weapon, or a hazardous material. For the false-threat offense, the government must prove the further facts that the threat was false, that the accused knew it was false when communicated, and that the communication was malicious, meaning made with the intent to cause, or with reckless disregard of the risk of causing, fear or disruption.

A recurring evidentiary question is whether the statement was a true expression of intent or merely careless or emotional speech. Courts resolve it by context: the relationship between the parties, the surrounding circumstances, the medium, and whether a reasonable person hearing the words would understand them as a genuine declaration of intent rather than hyperbole. Electronic messages, because they preserve the exact words and their timing, frequently supply the clearest evidence on this point.

Maximum punishment

The punishment ceilings climb steeply with the category of threat, and they are set by the Manual for Courts-Martial rather than by the statute, which says only that an offender shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.

Wrongfully communicating a general threat to injure a person, property, or reputation authorizes a dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and confinement for three years. Communicating a threat or a false threat involving an explosive, weapon of mass destruction, biological or chemical agent, or hazardous material authorizes a dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and confinement for ten years. The difference reflects the broad institutional harm of a weapons or hazardous-materials threat, which forces a response whether or not the danger is real.

For offenses committed on or after 27 December 2023, the military judge imposes the sentence in non-capital general and special courts-martial, working within the statutory sentencing parameters and criteria rather than the older practice of a panel adjudging a sentence up to the maximum. The ceilings above remain the outer limits, but the range a judge may actually impose is governed by those parameters and by the date of the offense.

Defenses

The central defense to a general-threat charge is that the communication was not a true threat. Statements made in jest, hyperbole understood by listeners as exaggeration, venting that no reasonable person would read as a declaration of intent, and protected expression that stops short of a genuine threat all fall outside the offense. The defense develops the context the prosecution must overcome: the tone, the history between the parties, the setting, and whether the audience reacted as though a real threat had been made.

Other defenses turn on the elements themselves. Because the offense is complete on communication, a claim that the accused never intended to follow through does not defeat a general-threat charge, but a claim that the words were not in fact communicated to or understood by anyone, or that they cannot fairly be read as expressing intent to injure, attacks the offense at its root. For the false-threat variant, the knowledge and malice elements supply additional defenses: a speaker who believed the danger was real, however mistakenly, has not maliciously communicated a known falsehood.

Related articles and collateral consequences

Where a threat is the opening move of a demand for money or action, the conduct may be extortion under Article 127 rather than, or in addition to, communicating a threat. Where the threatened harm is actually attempted, the assault articles, Article 128 and its neighbors, govern the attempted or completed violence, and the threat may still be charged alongside as a separate wrong. A threat directed at a superior in the chain of command may also implicate the disrespect and insubordination articles. Because threats now live in their own statute, prosecutors no longer reach for the general article, Article 134, to charge an ordinary threat.

A threat conviction can carry consequences beyond the sentence. When the threat is directed at a current or former spouse, an intimate partner, or a family member, the conduct may overlap with domestic violence under Article 128b, and a qualifying conviction can trigger the federal firearms prohibition under the Lautenberg Amendment, a bar that for a service member whose duties require carrying a weapon can effectively end a career.

Sources

• 10 U.S.C. 915, Article 115, Communicating threats: https://law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/915
• 10 U.S.C. 927, Article 127, Extortion: https://law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/927
• Manual for Courts-Martial, United States (2024 ed.), Part IV (Punitive Articles), Article 115: https://jsc.defense.gov

This article is for general informational purposes only and is not legal advice. It describes military law and procedure of public record, does not address any individual case, and does not create an attorney-client relationship.