Gate guardian

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RAF Bloodhound missile outside the RAF Museum in London.

Hawker Siddeley Harrier plinthed as a gate guardian at RAF Stafford

A gate guardian is a withdrawn piece of equipment, often an aircraft, armoured vehicle or locomotive, mounted on a plinth and used as a static display near to and forming a symbolic display of "guarding" the main entrance to somewhere, especially a military base. Commonly, gate guardians outside airbases are decommissioned examples of aircraft that were once based there, or still are.

Examples of gate guardians in the United Kingdom include the following:

De Havilland Comet at RAF Lyneham
Hawker Siddeley Harrier at RAF Wittering (visible from the northbound A1)
Hawker Hunter at RAF Halton
Spitfire and Hurricane at Biggin Hill
McDonnel Douglas Phantom at RAF Boulmer
Spitfire Replica at RAF Benson
BAC Jet Provost at RAF Linton-on-Ouse
Spitfire at RAF Uxbridge
Hawker Siddeley Harrier at RAF Stafford
SEPECAT Jaguar from the former RAF Coltishall, now named "Spirit of Coltishall" and displayed at Norfolk County Council
25 Pounder howitzers at 48 Regiment Royal Artillery, Thorney Island.

All of the Spitfires and Hurricanes that now serve as gate guardians are glass fibre replicas.^{[citation needed]}

Until March 2007, a 40% scale replica of Concorde had been located at the main road entrance to Heathrow Airport, when it was moved to Brooklands Museum, Surrey.^[1]^[2]

Examples of gate guardians for other uses include outside Balinese temples.