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Originally Posted by FASTBOAT TOUGH
A. I'm still convinced it's carrying a 115mm main gun
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And few dispute this as far this vehicle is concerned.
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If the Russians could have fitted a 125mm in a T-62 I'm guessing they would have thus eliminating the need for the T-64 which did have a 125mm mounted and was the "bridge" to the T-72.
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Actually reality is far more convoluted. The T-64 was not meant to be a bridge to the T-72, despite what the number in the designation might suggest. The T-64 was supposed to be the successor of the T-55 in the role of primary MBT for the soviet army. However such sophisticated, designed from scratch vehicle created several problems. The first was delays in the development. Then cost, reliability and producibility issues.
This forced the adoption of the T-62, basically an evolved T-55 modified to accept a bigger gun, as initial stopgap measure. While eventually some problems of the T-64 were fixed others could not be. This led designers to incorporate some of the T-64 features into an evolution of the T-62, which gave birth to the T-72.
A good evolutionary diagram of the design process that led from the T-62 to the T-72 can be found here.
http://www.t-72.de/html/versuchspanzer.html
As far upgunning goes I have seen prototypes and proposals of even
T-55s upgunned with 125mm guns. Granted, they looked like a marriage made in hell but point being, integrating a 125mm gun in a design based off the T-62 is probably not impossible and in a sense it has already been done.
Now it is perfectly possible that the gun on the round turreted vehicle is still a 115mm. After all with the thermal jacket is hard to tell. Bear in mind however that there are several 125mm gun models around, I honestly do not remember if there are outer differences in the thermal jacket but it seems at least a possibility.