I guess what I’m asking is what are the different functions of the two types of vehicles? Why can’t militaries combine them?
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Some militaries do in fact combine them, the Israeli Merkava for example can carry a small number of troops.
Generally speaking though tanks should be heavily armored, as low to the ground as possible, and all spare room carries equipment or ammunition.
Adding troop carrying capacity to the body forces the tank to be larger and taller which makes it more vulnerable.
The Merkava makes room by removing a bunch of it’s internal stores and putting the engine at the front vs the back which is generally considered the wrong way round. Putting the engine up front makes it more vulnerable as the heat exchange and vents are the weakest part. On the flip side all that extra metal of the engine is in between the crew and the shell so it’s a trade-off. It makes the tank easier to kill but makes the crew more survivable.
The movie *The Pentagon Wars* goes into this in detail and why the Bradley, an armored fighting vehicle or APC + tank hybrid, is considered a fundamentally flawed design.
APCs should ideally be fast so weighing them down with extra armor and guns works against that.
Adding the turret and optics onto it to make it a scout makes it too tall and vulnerable. The gun turret takes up space making it carry less troops. Also having big guns and missiles on it makes it a bigger target, which is bad if you are using it to protect infantry. So it’s a bad compromise born out of a misguided attempt to save money by combining multiple vehicle concepts into one.
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