denton,
Both caseless ammo and electronic scopes with internal ballistic calculators have already existed in very viable forms for a while. I hunted with a Voere rifle using caseless ammo providing very similar ballistics to the .223 Remington in South Africa in 1993, and it was very accurate and reliable. In fact the only odd thing about using it was opening the action after shooting a round, and not having an empty case fly out of the action! The automatic reaction is to suspect some sort of extraction problem, but there never was a "stuck case."
The ammo was a little more expensive than standard brass-cartridge ammo, but not by all that much. But despite the best efforts of the same advertising/public relations firm that was making a major success of Swarovski optics at the time, it went nowhere in the marketplace. Maybe if the rifle hadn't been European?
The Burris Eliminator scopes with internal laser range-finder that light up an LED aiming point work very well. (Bushnell and Nikon marketed very similar scopes, but somehow Burris won out.) They also provide a reading for a 10-mph, full-value wind-drift in the "viewfinder" of the scope. Another scope/rifle system has been available that compensates for moving targets.
Those scopes admittedly do not provide a reading that includes automatic compensation for environmental conditions, such as temperature, elevation and wind, but those are already included in military "target-finding" programs. Would they be accepted/purchased by civilian shooters if available in scopes?
Obviously it would depend on price, but many hunters and target shooters are already spending several thousand dollars on conventional "mechanical" scopes, then using ballistic programs in their smart phones to make corrections for environmental conditions.
Would they be willing to spend as much for scopes that do it all? Indications so far are no, but as we've seen in recent years, technology that was considered too expensive often becomes much more "affordable" in a few years.
Whether or not shooters who've spent years learning to use mechanical scopes with ballistic apps will spend plenty of money, but scopes that take over their "job" are another question. There's always some resistance to new technology. We saw it a generation or two ago with synthetic stocks, which now almost totally dominate the market.
