you could recharge the system via a crank driven by the bolt as mentioned earlier

its potentially just a coil to shove the locking mechanism around

You could, but that's not what matters, what matters is why you would

easier, no need for a gas piston

no need for super finely toleranced systems designed to release the locking at the exact right time off of gas pressure alone

that take years to perfect

You're replacing one simple mechanical piece with several more complicated electromechanical assemblies

That is not a net benefit

its maybe two moving parts

little locks on either side of the bolt that extend and retract

Modern gas operation systems do not require years to perfect, that work is already done

insofar as you arent making a new gun at that point

Why reinvent the wheel?

either there is a fair bit of fiddling to do as your particular gas system is refined

or its another ar-15 derivative

well because potentially it would be cheaper

to have something that doesnt need these super toleranced parts

even the g3 needs a huge amount of machine work to make it precisely enough for it to run right

Have you seen how cheap AR15s are now?

on the order of hundreds of bucks

The tight tolerances aren't in the gas system

They're in the locking system

Regardless of how you unlock and cycle the action, you still need those tight tolerances in the locking system

Fancy new systems don't make things cheap, economy of scale does

i mean thats kindof objectively not always true

computerized control has made a lot of things cheaper

It's true enough

because its way less effort to make it work right

you just tell the machine what you want and it does it

Computer control only works in the first place because of economies of scale

in terms of timing and such thats a fairly good deal

yes and you can use the same sorts of parts

everywhere

because they are pretty general purpose transformers of input into arbitrary output

you dont need a new computer for every application generally speaking

and a whole huge assembly line

Thing is, minimum an electronically controlled firearm requires pressure sensors in the barrel, actuators to unlock, some sort of battery and charging system, and a processor

you could probably do it off of timing alone, but pressure sensing is just a transducer

A gas system does all the same stuff with a few simple mechanical components

Again, it's not about what's possible, it's about what it does *better*

i mean in a lot of cases the whole (generally carefully tuned) gas system is purely to drive the unlocking timing