The recruiting team of W (Westminster Dragoons) Squadron, The Royal Yeomanry is often presented with the same sensible questions. This is mainly because official sources of information about the Territorial Army do not go into practical detail. Here, we try to answer some of the question that crop up most frequently. We have grouped them into the following categories. Click on a topic to go straight to it if you would rather not read through them all.
● general questions about the Territorial Army
● questions about eligibility to join
● nationality, immigration and visa questions
General FAQs about the Territorial Army
Q. What does the Territorial Army do?
A. The TA is a full part of the British Army, playing a vital role in the nation's defence and peacekeeping operations, both at home and abroad. It is staffed by part-time, voluntary personnel, but still represents one quarter of the Army's total capability. One-quarter of British personnel who took part on Op TELIC (the Iraq war in 2003) were reservists, the vast majority being members of the TA. The TA continues to provide about 1,400 soldiers per year for the British Army’s operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Q. What is the relationship between the TA and the Regular Army?
A. Since the Strategic Defence Review of 1998, the TA has become a more relevant and useable part of the Army than ever before. The two are becoming increasingly integrated both in peacetime training and on operations, which is generating a healthy mutual respect. The future army structure, published in 2004, envisages even greater peacetime linkage between the TA and the regular Army, so that when both deploy together on operations they will already be fully integrated.
