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
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”).
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?
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.
I mean, everyone but you classifies them as tanks, but ok.
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”).