[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.