I may be mistaken, but I don't think the ActionForm is in the request object.
 It's manufactured by the controller servlet.

I don't know what you mean by "request object". The ActionForm is
passed to the execute method of your Action object in the "form"
parameter. You have to define the FormBean (an ActionForm) in the
struts-config.xml file (assuming you're using Struts 1.x).

Example: code from struts-config.xml:

<form-beans>
   <form-bean  name="EntryFormBean"
type="gov.bls.idcf.ces.struts.EntryFormBean">
   </form-bean>
</form-beans>

<action-mappings>
   <action    path="/entryForm"
              type="gov.bls.idcf.ces.struts.EntryFormAction"
              name="EntryFormBean"
              scope="request"
              input="/index.jsp">
     <forward name="FormABCE"  path="/content/cesform_abce.jsp"
redirect="false"/>
     <forward name="FormGS"  path="/content/cesform_gs.jsp"
redirect="false"/>
     <forward name="PayGroup" path="/content/PayGroups.jsp"
redirect="false"/>
   </action>
</action-mappings>

When a jsp page submits to "entryForm.do" the Struts applet looks up
this action entry, finds that you've specified "EntryFormBean", finds
the form-beans entry for that, instantiates that bean and fills it
with the contents of the form. It then finds EntryFormAction
(specified in "type"), calls the "execute" method of that object and
passes that bean (among other things) as an argument.