Maybe tank isn’t the right word, but I swear I’ve seen vehicles with big guns with wheels. Why would you pick one over the other?
In: Engineering
“Tank” is a specific designation for a vehicle that is heavily armored, tracked, and uses a turreted, large caliber main gun (M1 Abrams, Leclerc, T-90, etc.), “that can fire on the move” in a direct fire-role. If it doesn’t have tracks (a lot of armored personnel carriers, the Stryker, etc.), it isn’t a tank. If it doesn’t have a large-bore main gun (a lot of *other* armored personnel carriers, the M2 Bradley, etc.), it isn’t a tank. If it has a BIG gun but has to stop and plot where it is to shoot at targets it can’t see (M109 Paladin, AS-90 2S19, etc.), it isn’t a tank.
The term you’re looking for is “Armored Fighting Vehicle (AFV),” which encompasses everything. All tanks are AFVs, but not all AFVs are tanks.
“Tank” is something that gets tossed around a lot and many people outside of the military considered any armored vehicle to be a tank
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