What do the SAS reserves actually do?
The SAS reserves — 21 SAS and 23 SAS — are part of United Kingdom Special Forces, staffed by people who hold civilian jobs and train around them. Reserve service means regular training commitments in your own time, with the possibility of deploying in support of operations.
Service around a job
The honest description of reserve service is that it consumes the time other people spend resting. Weeknights, weekends, annual leave. Nobody supervises the training you do between commitments, which means the whole thing rests on whether you will run in the dark and rain when nobody would know if you didn't.
Do the reserves deploy?
Reserve special forces personnel have deployed on operations, but what any individual does, where and when is not something the Army publishes and not something I have first-hand knowledge of. Anyone claiming to give you specifics online should be treated with suspicion. Ask the unit.
Are the reserves respected?
It is the question people actually type into Google, so here is the honest answer from the outside: the selection process makes no allowances for the fact that you have a job, and the people who get through it are, without exception, the ones who took the preparation seriously for months. Whatever anyone thinks of the badge, the standard required to reach it is not a soft one.
A note on accuracy
Entry criteria, standards and selection dates are set by the Army and change over time. Take anything current from the Army's own UK Special Forces Reserve pages; take everything below as one applicant's experience.
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