About Defence

Cadet statistics

A few interesting facts you might not know about the Cadet Forces:

Collectively there are around 133,000 Cadets, broken down as:

  • 44,130 - Combined Cadet Force
  • 8,310 - Sea Cadet Corps
  • 46,990 - Army Cadet Force
  • 33,560 - Air Training Corps


Enabling so many Cadets to take part are more than 24,000 Adult Volunteers:

  • 2,090 - Combined Cadet Force
  • 3,600 - Sea Cadet Corps
  • 9,450 - Army Cadet Force
  • 9,180 - Air Training Corps

Cadets typically range in age from 12-18 years old.

2 cadets white water rafting

Cadets try their hand at white water rafting

Adult Volunteers typically range from 18-65 years old.

257 schools have Combined Cadet Forces, 61 of which are state schools

A Combined Cadet Force (CCF) can contain one or more sections from the Royal Navy, Royal Marines, Army or Royal Air Force.


Cadet rock climbing

A cadet is put through their paces on a climbing wall

People from all walks of life serve in the Cadet Forces, either through their school in the Combined Cadet Forces, or by joining individual Service Cadet organisations.

If you take a cross section of the most prominent people in Britain today, you’d be surprised how many of them were once cadets, such as the Dean of Westminster, the novelist Sebastian Faulks, Chris Martin from Coldplay, David Walliams, Jeremy Irons, Tom Lucy, Olympic Silver Medallist in rowing in the 2008 Games, Jamie Hickman, the Olympic and Commonwealth Gold Medal swimmer, and Len Deighton, author of “The Ipcress File”.





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