A combination of both and then different as well. As an Army guy, I look at LAVs as fighting vehicles but with a recon role. We (the Army) don't have them; the MGS Stryker is changing that I guess. In regard to LAVs as recon armor, they are exactly like the light tanks (the Stuart for example) that we entered WWII with. In the case of the Stuart, mobility was confused with speed. No tank was/is fast enough to outrun a German 88. The same held true with tank destroyer doctrine; that heavier gunned, but lighter armored (no covered turrets) TDs could move rapidly across the battlefield, mass at the correct place and time, and slaughter massed armor. The reality was they could NOT move because they did not have the necessary armor to move under fire, especially with open turrets.

Other countries have played with this concept, notably the French, the South Africans, and the Soviets. The French Panhard series is seen all over Francophone Africa. They did well against the Libyans in the 1980s as the latter's armor (T55s and T62s I recall) was slower and the French literrally drove circles around them. The French used their light armor as the western screen for the US/Coalition assault in Desert Storm. That said, Panhards in the former Rwandan army were meat on the table for the rebel RPA, who had no armor and generally light AT systems (RPGS and some RRs).

But getting back to MGS Stryker and LAVs. The MGS is a support vehicle for a Stryker unit giving it more firepower in certain roles. LAVs fight as LAV battalions do they not? That means they can mass and move rapidly in roles suitable for light armor. Neither system, however, was built to attack and breach a defensive line as 1st ID did in 1991 or to hit Iraqi armor as 2ACR did at 73 Easting (with then Captain H.R. McMasters as the lead troop commander).

Best
Tom