iPad Message Delivery Issues after iOS 18.3 Update

I can no longer send messages containing links or media if an android user is involved either individually or group. MMS is on in iPhone and forwarding is enabled. The message field on iPad now says SMS - wasn’t like this before.

I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled messages.

interesting aside which may matter…

was on apple support messaging yesterday and my messages would not sync to iPad. His did. So something is not working. I do have message forwarding enabled and have both phone number and email address enabled in messages.