[Symmetry]

Yes, if one of my friends called a Bradley a tank that's close enough and I wouldn't bother to correct them. But if a reporter calls a Bradley a tank that shows that they're missing some basic "military 101" knowledge and it'll influence how much I trust what they're saying.

[dogma1138]

Both the Bradley and the Abrams are AFVs, the issue is that most people aren’t familiar with the term AFV and they think that anything with armor and a gun is a tank.

As far as the AFV totem pole goes then the “Tank” sits on top it’s designed to pretty much fight and kill everything else on the battlefield.

The MBT is an evolution of the Tank concept the reason why most nations don’t have multiple tank classes today is that modern technology allows one to build a highly mobile, heavily armored vehicle with just about the biggest gun around.

Whilst historically at least during the first 5-6 or so decades of the “Tank” you had to make compromises which lead to wider range of “Tank” classes.

[mcv]

Kill everything? MBTs aren't great at targeting flying targets. Helicopters in particular are a direct competitor to tanks for bringing mobile heavy firepower to the battlefield. And Gepards are good against those.

Combat roles are fuzzy and any attemp to define rigid, dogmatic named roles that will stand the test of time is doomed to fail if you ask me.

Of course the article only really addresses modern vehicles and explicitly avoids discussing many WW2 vehicles like the StuG or IS-152 because modern definitions don't really fit there. Many WW2 tanks had very thin armor relying more on speed, like the BT-7 or the M-18 Hellcat. Tank or not? Depends on who and when you ask.

[dogma1138]

I should’ve added on the ground, but MBTs today can also successfully target and shoot down helicopters too.

The Hellcat wasn’t a tank it was another class of AFVs called a tank destroyer which again also pretty much disappeared from the battlefield today.

Tho some European armies that their doctrine relies heavily on a dug in defensive war do still employ what you could class as a tank destroyer.

[mcv]

See? Declaring the Hellcat "not a tank" is one of those issues. According to the OP's definition, it's a tank, it's a tank according to any layperson that would see one, it has all the features of a tank (including a turret, even), and it fills a tank role: destroying other tanks. The only thing that makes it not-a-tank is its classification in US tank doctrine at the time. Because to at the time, to the US, a tank was an infantry support tank. But today, it would absolutely be considered a tank, if a lightly armoured one. But light tanks were still tanks according to all other WW2 combatants at the time.

[dogma1138]

And I have no problem with that, I think the whole tank not a tank debate is just pedantic.

As I originally said since most people aren’t familiar with the term AFV they pretty much consider anything that doesn’t look like a car and can shoot things a tank.

Self propelled artillery complicates thing especially artillery that can pretty much shoot as flat as a tank like the Paladin for example.

If you show a lay person a picture of the M109 they’ll call that a tank too.

[Retric]

The real issue is half of the original Mark 1 tanks only had machine guns and they where all lightly armored. It’s primary role was fighting infantry as a mobile machine gun platform, and so the AFV is just another tank. If anything an M1 Abrams is further from the initial definition than an AFV.

People want to fit their idea of a “tank” based on a small subset of them while ignore things like flame tanks which spits on the narrow definitions.

[dogma1138]

AFV encompasses everything from armored combat engineering vehicles to tanks.

[Retric]

And? The Mark IX, was ‘carrier’ tank Aka an APC. One was even considered an amphibious tank via flotation tanks and bilge pumps.

Various examples of radio tanks existed who’s job was communication a role which any modern AFV with a two way radio can fulfill.

The Renault FT was considered a French tank and looks closer to modern designs though with a machine gun rather than anything heavier. Except again a huge number of variants was created to fit a range of roles including laying cable.

[dogma1138]

Again an AFV is an umbrella term that covers any type of armored combat vehicle.

This would be probably the most correct term to use to describe a wide range of armored vehicles that is being shipped to Ukraine.

But I also don’t particularly have a problem with the media just using the term “Tank” as a catch all term.

[Retric]

I agree, sorry if that wasn’t clear my point was tank as a term showed up early enough that roles weren’t clear. In other words it wasn’t descriptive or prescriptive.

People essentially defined the roles after the term was in use and then used those roles to redefine Tank. Which is fine, but hardly grounds for getting upset over slightly older and more ambiguous definition of the same word.