Joseph,
The mission of
any system is elaborated by what it does, not by what its
called.
For example if I
call the school bus a Transatlantic Ghormophonic Extravoyager,
its system function would remain to collect children from
their homes and to deliver them to school.
What was the
function of the BMP-1?
It was armed with
a gun firing an anti-tank rocket, a guided anti-tank missile,
and had a team of anti-tank rocket-propelled grenadiers as
passengers. It also had a team of riflemen to provide support
for the grenadiers and the anti-tank missile operator when
dismounted. Given that most passengers of the BMP-1 and most
of its weapons were to be used in either anti-tank role or to
support anti-tank combat tasks, the BMP-1 was an anti-tank
vehicle.
The BMP-1
replaced the BTR-50, which was also an anti-tank vehicle. It
was unusually large, and seated 20 'infantrymen'...on Moscow
parades. In the field it seated ten artillery crew, towed a
100mm anti-tank gun and the rest of the cargo space was
occupied by ammunition.
25mm APFSDS-DU
rounds could under certain circumstances penetrate some of the
T-55 and T-72 armour.
The Bradley
vehicle needs to find itself in a favourable orientation to
the target first.
However, the M919
ammunition was approved for production in 1996, three years
after the Cold War ended.
The chances that
a small (~100g) penetrator rod of causing serious enough
damage to destroy an MBT is small, but not to be discounted of
course.
Greg