Do you think a tank is only a tank when it has a big gun?
If I understood the nomenclature used in English discussions, for them a tank indeed is an armoured tracked vehicle with a big gun, i.e. a MBT. In opposite, in German a Panzer is (almost) any heavy armoured ‘all terrain’ vehicle, e.g. also the PzH 2000, bridge layers (Bieber, Leguan), engineering vehicles (Dachs), Recovery vehicles (Büffel), IFVs (Marder, Puma) or the armoured multi purpose vehicles like Fuchs and Boxer.
I used the german Wikipedia page for types though.
Edit: the english Wiki page has a similar list, it’s just on a different page (german Wiki has a types list in the “Panzer”-article while the types I pointed out are referred to as Specialist tank in the article “Tanks Classification”).
Maybe the German definition is derived differently, but notice that in all the English links to military sources a careful distinction is made between “armored vehicles” and “tanks”.
The German definition is indeed different. That’s why the German Wikipedia article on “Panzer” (“armour”) links to “AFV” and not “Tank”.
This is a quite common misconception present in the media, as e.g. at the beginning of the Ukraine war the back-then German secretary of defense stated: “The Gepard is no tank. The Gepard is for protecting infrastructure by shooting with it’s pipe [Rohr] into the air.” which a) is a bogus quote and b) did not translate well, as she used “Panzer” to translate “tank” and not “(Haupt-)Kampfpanzer ((main) battle tank)”.
Tanks have often been modified for special purposes. The most common is armoured recovery vehicles, used during combat for recovery or repair of battle-damaged and inoperable armoured fighting vehicles. Another common use is to provide armoured capability for combat engineers. These include tanks carrying large-calibre demolition guns, with flails or ploughs for mine-clearing, or flame tanks armed with flamethrowers. The tank occasionally may lose its weapons and the chassis alone may be used, as in bridge-laying tanks
An army is not only tanks with big fat guns. All the mentioned assets lay the groundwork for any meaningful operation. What good are drones, if you cannot get a foothold and bring in forces to occupy landscapes?
None of these are tanks though. They are tracked vehicles with some armor plating (and even that isn’t necessarily the case for artillery or mobile air-defense). A tank as it is commonly understood has specific operational capabilities and those are are mostly denied by anti-tank drones.
If you adhere to the strict definition of “A tank is an armoured fighting vehicle intended as a primary offensive weapon in front-line ground combat.” you are right.
Still. While we see less tank on tank combat, we see a lot of tanks shooting at fixed positions. Same goes with IFVs as they unload troops or enable tactical advances.
They are far from being obsolete but they’re using smaller windows of opportunity. And sometime it takes a lot of anti tank drones before a tank had a mission kill.
They’re still valuable tactical assets.
Edit: found the image which explains the definition problem at reddit.
Yes, the local construction site also has a lot of ”tanks" by that loose definition 🙄
Your local construction site has armoured vehicles capable of doing their jobs while under enemy fire? Why?
A caterpillar with some armor plating is now a tank?
Is this just “a caterpillar with some armour plating”? Or this one? What about this bridge-layer currently operated by Ukraine (among others)?
Do you think a tank is only a tank when it has a big gun?
If I understood the nomenclature used in English discussions, for them a tank indeed is an armoured tracked vehicle with a big gun, i.e. a MBT. In opposite, in German a Panzer is (almost) any heavy armoured ‘all terrain’ vehicle, e.g. also the PzH 2000, bridge layers (Bieber, Leguan), engineering vehicles (Dachs), Recovery vehicles (Büffel), IFVs (Marder, Puma) or the armoured multi purpose vehicles like Fuchs and Boxer.
I used the german Wikipedia page for types though.
Edit: the english Wiki page has a similar list, it’s just on a different page (german Wiki has a types list in the “Panzer”-article while the types I pointed out are referred to as Specialist tank in the article “Tanks Classification”).
Yes, because “tank” isn’t defined by armor plating or tracks, but by operational capabilities the weapon category offers.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzer#Typen
Maybe the German definition is derived differently, but notice that in all the English links to military sources a careful distinction is made between “armored vehicles” and “tanks”.
The German definition is indeed different. That’s why the German Wikipedia article on “Panzer” (“armour”) links to “AFV” and not “Tank”.
This is a quite common misconception present in the media, as e.g. at the beginning of the Ukraine war the back-then German secretary of defense stated: “The Gepard is no tank. The Gepard is for protecting infrastructure by shooting with it’s pipe [Rohr] into the air.” which a) is a bogus quote and b) did not translate well, as she used “Panzer” to translate “tank” and not “(Haupt-)Kampfpanzer ((main) battle tank)”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_classification#Specialist_tank
The chassis of tank models have been repurposed for other tasks, yes. That doesn’t make those armored vehicles tanks.
Difference is the above mentioned are armored.
An army is not only tanks with big fat guns. All the mentioned assets lay the groundwork for any meaningful operation. What good are drones, if you cannot get a foothold and bring in forces to occupy landscapes?
None of these are tanks though. They are tracked vehicles with some armor plating (and even that isn’t necessarily the case for artillery or mobile air-defense). A tank as it is commonly understood has specific operational capabilities and those are are mostly denied by anti-tank drones.
If you adhere to the strict definition of “A tank is an armoured fighting vehicle intended as a primary offensive weapon in front-line ground combat.” you are right.
Still. While we see less tank on tank combat, we see a lot of tanks shooting at fixed positions. Same goes with IFVs as they unload troops or enable tactical advances. They are far from being obsolete but they’re using smaller windows of opportunity. And sometime it takes a lot of anti tank drones before a tank had a mission kill. They’re still valuable tactical assets.
Edit: found the image which explains the definition problem at reddit.