The UK has the 21 and 23 SAS, special forces regiments within the Territorial Army, staffed by volunteers. Do any other nations have similar special forces regiments which are not staffed by full time soldiers?
Not in the U.S., IIRC. The only “part-time soldiers” we have are in the various states’ National Guards - and, in recent years, that’s becoming less and less part-time, given lengthy and repeated deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. None of the NG units are considered special forces.
SAS? Super Army Soldiers?
Wrong. In fact, Our very own Bear_nenno is(or was) a member of just such a unit.
Doesn’t the SBS also have a Territorial unit?
I don’t know, I merely used the SAS as an example.
Link to the Army National Guard page on National Guard Special Forces.
The US also has the 919th Special Operations Wing (official blurb near bottom).
In the UK, in addition to the SAS the Royal Marines apparently have a reserve unit.
The Israeli army has several special ops units among its reserves. Every reserve infantry brigade, every reserve armor brigade, and several regular armor brigades each have an elite recon company (“sayeret”) consisting of reservists. In addition, the IDF’s sole alpine unit is made up of former sayeret members who learned how to ski as civilians.