Cloaking

[Neutral Zone]

Why is it that the Federation have never developed cloaking abilities? They hijacked a Klingon ship in the movie Search for Spock and used it in the sequel. So they had ship that they could steal the technology from. They couldn't say that no one knew how to use it because it was used in movie IV.

 

[Vanyel]

The have developed cloaking technology, and phasing technology. It was shown in the TNG episode The Pegasus. The only thing is that they cannot use it due to the Treaty of Algeron.

 

[Neutral Zone]

Thanks, but I noticed that the treaty was signed 160 years after The Pegasus, but the Federation had gotten the technology way before then? This makes the Klingons and Romulans look far superior, I'm surprised that they ever signed a treaty.

 

[Verteron]

Gene Roddenberry indicated in various interviews that "our heroes don't sneak around".

As for an in-universe explanation, I agree that Starfleet is primarily designed with a science and exploration mission. They never built ships that were solely battleships. Our guys want to be noticed by the local flora and fauna in a new star system they're exploring, nothing says "come and say hi" like an enourmous starship hanging in orbit of your homeworld.

Besides, I doubt all the high-powered active scans from those massive sensor dishes on the front of the engineering hulls and the super-precise science-grade sensors can be hidden quite as easily as a ship designed by the Romulans for sneaking around.

Cloaks have never been much of an advantage in battle, sure, you can pop up out of no-where and surprise your enemy, but once the shooting actually starts, obviously the cloak can't be engaged (occasional invisible ships with fire-whilst-cloaked abilities aside).

Any larger fleet movements are probably detectable by starbases on the border (even if not easily by individual starships), or you rely on your network of spies and informants to tell you when an invasion's coming months before you need to worry about actual cloaked ships crossing your borders.

They may not be as big a tactical advantage as you think...

 

[Unicron]

Cloaks do appear on some Federation vessels in the pre-TNG era in some fanon tech works. It would be nice to get a better explanation of the Treaty of Algeron's terms, since the little bits we've heard in canon episodes make it look extremely one-sided in terms of how cloaks are often portrayed (futuristic stealth systems). And even with the promise of not developing their own cloaks, Starfleet could always ask the Klingons to borrow a cloaked ship for missions as was done a few times. The Romulans don't seem to have a good way of directly enforcing this clause in the treaty.

 

[Anwar]

We don't know what the Romulans gave up on their end of the Treaty, so for all we know they gave up some greater tech as well. Ever notice they never used that powerful plasma torpedo again after "Balance of Terror"?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I've come to believe that the Treaty of Algernon resulted from a Federation program to develop a modern cloaking device for Starfleet ships. The Romulan Empire found this threatening enough to resort to military action, and in doing so dealt the Federation the worst ass whupping in its collective history.

Battered, beaten, and desperate to defuse an already disastrous conflict, the Federation capitulated to Romuland demands to never again develop cloaking technology, as well as a whole host of other technologies the Romulans considered threatening to their security (quantum torpedoes might well have been on the same restricted list, only to be pulled out of the woodworks after the demise of the Tal Shiar and the treaty being rendered unenforceable).

 

[Vanyel]

Thanks, but I noticed that the treaty was signed 160 years after The Pegasus, but the Federation had gotten the technology way before then? This makes the Klingons and Romulans look far superior, I'm surprised that they ever signed a treaty.

The Treaty was signed around 160 after the end of the Earth Romulan War. The Tomed Incident was the catalyst for its creation.

 

[Deks]

I wouldn't be surprised if the Treaty in question only meant peace between the Romulan Empire and the Federation.
In turn, the Romulans are free to develop cloaking technology, and the Feds know that their most critical planets/systems cannot be bypassed by the use of cloaks to begin with.
The only vulnerability the Feds might have in this treaty is when individual ships encounter cloaked Romulan ships a fair distance away from any outposts/starbases.

 

[Anwar]

Yeah, there's that. Cloaks weren't that effective by DS9 anymore.

 

[strongmind]

Yeah, there's that. Cloaks weren't that effective by DS9 anymore.

In Nemisis I was surprised the they could not detect the Shimitar as it flew around in the green nebula just from the wake of a bubble thru gas.

 

[JuanBolio]

Yeah, there's that. Cloaks weren't that effective by DS9 anymore.

In Nemisis I was surprised the they could not detect the Shimitar as it flew around in the green nebula just from the wake of a bubble thru gas.

I myself am stumped on how any cloaked ship avoids easy detection by the massive amount of waste heat it must give off. Finding a starship on infrared should be an easy task when its against the icy blackness of space. All that heat has to go somewhere, otherwise the ship would overheat very rapidly.

 

[Neutral Zone]

Yeah, there's that. Cloaks weren't that effective by DS9 anymore.

In Nemisis I was surprised the they could not detect the Shimitar as it flew around in the green nebula just from the wake of a bubble thru gas.

I myself am stumped on how any cloaked ship avoids easy detection by the massive amount of waste heat it must give off. Finding a starship on infrared should be an easy task when its against the icy blackness of space. All that heat has to go somewhere, otherwise the ship would overheat very rapidly.

Agreed, in the movie 'The Undiscovered Country', it was through gas emissions from it's 'tail pipe' that they managed to destroy General Chang's Klingon ship.

 

[Unicron]

True, but I think one can always infer that to be a negative result of the modifications made to the ship to let it fire while cloaked. It would be a decent explanation for why the Klingons didn't continue building such ships.

 

[JuanBolio]

Yep - radiation would be another dead giveaway if the ship is using some kind of fusion-based drive, like impulse. Keep those emissions bottled up inside your cloaking field and you'll fry.... on top of the waste heat problem.

There just ain't no stealth in space.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Yep - radiation would be another dead giveaway if the ship is using some kind of fusion-based drive, like impulse. Keep those emissions bottled up inside your cloaking field and you'll fry.... on top of the waste heat problem.

There just ain't no stealth in space.

Stealth isn't "undetectability" even in Trek terms. The "practical invisibility screen" from balance of terror still allowed the cloaked vessel to be tracked, though not targeted.

Or think of submarines. They are, undeniably, the paragon of military stealth; they are also detectable by some fairly simple sensor devices like sonar and magnetic anomaly detectors. Even so, submarines remain stealthy enough that they are not easily noticed and can therefore avoid casual searches until it's too late.

The same must be said for Trek sensors, the often overlooked fact that the effective range of any sensor device depends ENTIRELY on what those sensors are looking for and their actual resolution at those ranges. A sensor sweep for something the size of a starship could take a few seconds or several hours depending on the resolution of your sensors and the range of the sweep. A cloaking device would have the effect of either 1) increasing the amount of time it will take to search a given area or 2) decreasing the maximum range within which a sensor could locate the vessel in a reasonable amount of time.

It's the difference between going into combat wearing camouflage and going into combat wearing a bright pink jumpsuit with hologram lamps on the shoulder.

 

[JuanBolio]

Stealth isn't "undetectability" even in Trek terms. The "practical invisibility screen" from balance of terror still allowed the cloaked vessel to be tracked, though not targeted.

Or think of submarines. They are, undeniably, the paragon of military stealth; they are also detectable by some fairly simple sensor devices like sonar and magnetic anomaly detectors. Even so, submarines remain stealthy enough that they are not easily noticed and can therefore avoid casual searches until it's too late.

The same must be said for Trek sensors, the often overlooked fact that the effective range of any sensor device depends ENTIRELY on what those sensors are looking for and their actual resolution at those ranges. A sensor sweep for something the size of a starship could take a few seconds or several hours depending on the resolution of your sensors and the range of the sweep. A cloaking device would have the effect of either 1) increasing the amount of time it will take to search a given area or 2) decreasing the maximum range within which a sensor could locate the vessel in a reasonable amount of time.

It's the difference between going into combat wearing camouflage and going into combat wearing a bright pink jumpsuit with hologram lamps on the shoulder.

No, even the "practical invisibility screen" wouldn't work. You might be able to bend visible light around a ship, but that wouldn't be enough. If you're not dumping lots and lots of waste heat which is visible on infrared, your ship will fry like an egg. All a searching ship would have to do is switch over to the infrared spectrum and the cloaked ship should stand out just as well if not better than by visible light.

There is no way to camouflage yourself. A starship will stand out as if it has spotlights on its shoulders no matter what it does. Check out this link, if you have the time. Its a really interesting read:

http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3w.html#nostealth

 

[Saturn0660]

Stealth isn't "undetectability" even in Trek terms. The "practical invisibility screen" from balance of terror still allowed the cloaked vessel to be tracked, though not targeted.

Or think of submarines. They are, undeniably, the paragon of military stealth; they are also detectable by some fairly simple sensor devices like sonar and magnetic anomaly detectors. Even so, submarines remain stealthy enough that they are not easily noticed and can therefore avoid casual searches until it's too late.

The same must be said for Trek sensors, the often overlooked fact that the effective range of any sensor device depends ENTIRELY on what those sensors are looking for and their actual resolution at those ranges. A sensor sweep for something the size of a starship could take a few seconds or several hours depending on the resolution of your sensors and the range of the sweep. A cloaking device would have the effect of either 1) increasing the amount of time it will take to search a given area or 2) decreasing the maximum range within which a sensor could locate the vessel in a reasonable amount of time.

It's the difference between going into combat wearing camouflage and going into combat wearing a bright pink jumpsuit with hologram lamps on the shoulder.

No, even the "practical invisibility screen" wouldn't work. You might be able to bend visible light around a ship, but that wouldn't be enough. If you're not dumping lots and lots of waste heat which is visible on infrared, your ship will fry like an egg. All a searching ship would have to do is switch over to the infrared spectrum and the cloaked ship should stand out just as well if not better than by visible light.

There is no way to camouflage yourself. A starship will stand out as if it has spotlights on its shoulders no matter what it does. Check out this link, if you have the time. Its a really interesting read:

http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3w.html#nostealth

Funny you would talk about the heat it gives off.. And i total agree with you. But i do seem to recall back in the early days of the B2 that it uses some kind of "exhaust cooling". So maybe some cloaks use something like this.

 

[Deks]

it's also possible that any extra emissions are being dumped into subspce or another layer of a domain that is not part of actual space in Trek.

SF likely doesn't know where to look for, or individual ships aren't usually configured or powerful enough to detect cloacked vessels, unless they know exactly what to look for.

 

[zephramc]

Stealth isn't "undetectability" even in Trek terms. The "practical invisibility screen" from balance of terror still allowed the cloaked vessel to be tracked, though not targeted.

Or think of submarines. They are, undeniably, the paragon of military stealth; they are also detectable by some fairly simple sensor devices like sonar and magnetic anomaly detectors. Even so, submarines remain stealthy enough that they are not easily noticed and can therefore avoid casual searches until it's too late.

The same must be said for Trek sensors, the often overlooked fact that the effective range of any sensor device depends ENTIRELY on what those sensors are looking for and their actual resolution at those ranges. A sensor sweep for something the size of a starship could take a few seconds or several hours depending on the resolution of your sensors and the range of the sweep. A cloaking device would have the effect of either 1) increasing the amount of time it will take to search a given area or 2) decreasing the maximum range within which a sensor could locate the vessel in a reasonable amount of time.

It's the difference between going into combat wearing camouflage and going into combat wearing a bright pink jumpsuit with hologram lamps on the shoulder.

No, even the "practical invisibility screen" wouldn't work. You might be able to bend visible light around a ship, but that wouldn't be enough. If you're not dumping lots and lots of waste heat which is visible on infrared, your ship will fry like an egg. All a searching ship would have to do is switch over to the infrared spectrum and the cloaked ship should stand out just as well if not better than by visible light.

There is no way to camouflage yourself. A starship will stand out as if it has spotlights on its shoulders no matter what it does. Check out this link, if you have the time. Its a really interesting read:

http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3w.html#nostealth

Thank's for the link Juan. I won't argue with your (or the author's) science, but I'm sure there's some BS technobabble excuse in regard to hiding a ships radiation. Maybe a cloaked ship diverts heat and what-not into subspace?