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“Panzer” in a very general protective sense translates to “Armour”. Brustpanzer -> Chest armour. Even a turtle’s shell is a Panzer. Typically a hard enclosure p
by gherkinnn 4y ago
“Panzer” in a very general protective sense translates to “Armour”. Brustpanzer -> Chest armour. Even a turtle’s shell is a Panzer. Typically a hard enclosure protecting the main body of a thing. But not its extremities. A “helmet” is a “Helm”. Though any element can be “gepanzert”, or “armoured”.
It is important to note that Panzer mostly refers to protection from violence. A civilian car is never “gepanzert”, neither is a padded skateboarder. Unless you’re mocking something. A Chelsea tractor is an Hausfrauenpanzer. One exception I can think of is the Rückenpanzer, or spine protector.
In a contemporary military context, a Panzer is any armoured vehicle. The definition is indeed looser than in English. The equivalent of tank (or main battle tank, MBT) is Kampfpanzer. Fighting tank.
An IFV like the M2 is a Schützenpanzer. Shooter/gunner/rifleman’s tank.
But when using Panzer to describe a specific vehicle, as opposed to a general category, I too would expect it to refer to an MBT. But I could be wrong here.
- brazzy 4y ago> A civilian car is never “gepanzert” There most definitely are civilian cars which count as "gepanzert": https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonderschutzfahrzeug https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonderschutzfahrzeug - still falling under your definition of "protection from violence".
- codeflo 4y agoAlso more commonly/colloquially called “Panzerlimousine” — armoured limousine.
- gerdesj 4y agoGreat response. Panzer on its own translates to (an) "armoured" (thing). I love the Chelsea tractor -> "Hausfrauenpanzer" allusion. The German might be translated as "The wife's tank" or "The missus' tank" or "Me bird's tank". The English word tank is the outlier. It's a code word for the initial concept that has stuck and unfortunately ended up as the canonical name for the thing. The word tank in English really used to mean a vessel eg a water tank. I lived in West Germany in the 1970s/80s ...
- dgfitz 4y agoAt the risk of getting shredded here for working in defense contracts on unmanned vehicles, I’m one of software engineers working on an unmanned tank. [0] If someone asks what I do my initial response was “recently I’ve been writing software for unmanned tanks” which was met with a lot of blank stares. Now I say something like “I work on tracked vehicles like what you would call a WWII tank” and that seems to go over better. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripsaw_(vehicle) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripsaw_(vehicle)
- cozos 4y agoUnmanned tank warfare sounds kinda humane actually. Instead of killing each other, tank crew members being cooked alive, etc, we just let the unmanned tanks duke it out kinda like a really expensive robotics competition. Of course reality doesn't really work like this but...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ido 4y agoFor the most part conventional armies don’t really fight one another that often anymore - it’s more common to have asymmetric warfare like western/russian involvement in the Middle East. These “tanks” will probably not target other “tanks”.
- cabalamat 4y agoI imagine calling them "killer robots" is frowned upon in your industry.
- dgfitz 4y agoSure isn’t. Turns out most of them aren’t meant to fire artillery. Edit: it’s also 100x more interesting than making a website or an app and arguing about which fotm framework to use.
- _ph_ 4y agoRight. People might use the word "Panzer" and have MBTs in their mind. Because that is the most famous kind of armored vehicle. But as the word "Panzer" is used for any kind of armor, it is pretty obvious, that it doesn't describe an exact vehicle type and all precise terms are compound words containing Panzer, like Kampfpanzer (MBT), Flugabwehrpanzer (anti air tank), Schützenpanzer (APAC). There is even the category of the Radpanzer, which means wheeled tank. But my favorite by far is the Brückenlegepanzer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EdJcObHIPo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EdJcObHIPo which can lay a 20m bridge in 5 minutes without any support and also pick it up again.
- schroeding 4y agoAnd there is overlap, like the TPz Fuchs[1]: It's a Transportpanzer (=> TPz), because it can transport troops, but also a Radpanzer, because it has wheels. On the other hand, the MTW M113[2] was not called Schützenpanzer (APAC) in the german army, but Mannschaftstransportwagen (=> MTW), lit. squad transport vehicle. No hint in there that it's a armoured, tracked vehicle. However, the swiss called them Schützenpanzer. German in the military is quite complicated :D [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TPz_Fuchs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TPz_Fuchs [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M113_armored_personnel_carrier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M113_armored_personnel_carrier
- _ph_ 4y agoAnd of course, the new Schützenpanzer Puma, while still being an APAC, has grown quite an impressive cannon. With its 35mm gun, it probably could hold itself well against the older russian MBTs, against everything else anyway.