Wikipedia:Categorization of military vehicles

This guidance covers the categorization of military ground vehicles (e.g. tanks, military motorcycles and unmanned ground combat vehicles). This guide is intended to assist with categorizing articles consistently whilst avoiding articles being placed in a large number of categories.

This guidance is not intended to apply to the following:

Vehicle characteristics used for categorization

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When categorizing an article about a type of military vehicle the following characteristics of the vehicle should be considered:

Categorization

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Many categories cover intersections of the characteristics listed above.

Every article about a military vehicle type should be categorized based on the first four characteristics listed above. This can be achieved using the categories of the types listed below. In this list (which is in approximate order of decreasing importance) links are to example categories.

Note: Not every type category has a by-country breakdown. So, for example, an article about a tank transporter from Germany should be categorized in Category:Tank transporters, but as that category does not (currently) have a by-country breakdown the article should also be placed in Category:Military trucks of Germany.[5]

In addition the article may be in categories of the types listed below (links are to examples).

Other combinations of characteristics should not be used - e.g. don't combine mobility characteristics with country-of-origin.[6] Vehicle articles should generally not be placed in weapons categories (the exception being vehicles such as self-propelled artillery).

Some aspects of this categorization scheme are aligned with related categories (e.g. aircraft, cars and weapons) to enable the categories to mesh together.

Notes

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  1. ^ The principle that mass-produced objects are not categorized by every country that has operated them is based on discussions such as Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2013_July_6#Category:Guided_missiles_by_operator.
  2. ^ E.g. the Leopard 2E was developed jointly by Germany and Spain.
  3. ^ Note: this is different to aircraft type articles where such articles are placed in an "international" category.
  4. ^ E.g. some Sherman tanks were amphibious, but the majority were not so the Sherman article should not be in a category for amphibious vehicles.
  5. ^ Note: The way aircraft are categorized avoids this problem by having a by-country breakdown for every type (role), but broad categories of aircraft (bomber, fighter etc) are used whereas military vehicles have been subcategorized more finely (e.g. into light tanks, medium tanks, cruiser tanks etc).
  6. ^ If every possible combination was used for a category there would be a lot of categories!