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
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.