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Balance of terror, balance of evidence?

In Enterprise Incident, the mission is to steal their "Improved" cloaking device. No one ever acts like they've never heard of the Romulan cloaking ability before. In fact, since the mission is specifically assigned by Starfleet to steal the improved cloaking device, Starfleet and our heroes obviously know about it.
 
But still, it's an alien piece of equipment no Starfleet Engineer has ever seen before. How would they have known it was compatible with their systems and stuff?

And how would the Romulans NOT know how to neutralize their own tech? They have more understanding of it than the Starfleet people do.
 
Strange that human and Romulan technology was compatible! Maybe they launched their own Nomad probe into space two hundred years earlier as well? :p
JB
 
We don't know what intel they had. Had they "seen" the new invisible ships in action? Or had an agent revealed the existence of this NOMAD-shaped piece of tech installed aboard standard ships, bolstering the (correct) "black box" assumption?

It's noteworthy that it's the Romulans who originally had to face and solve compatibility issues. They installed their new cloaking device on an alien ship, after all!

As for "how can't they neutralize their own tech?", by what logic should they be capable of it? Admittedly, if Trump or Putin so decides, every foreign F-35 or Su-35 will drop from the skies at the press of the Secret Button, no doubt about that. But there can be no Secret Button on most types of exported hardware, such as Stingers or tracked howlizers or even frequency-hopping field radios. Not affordably and effectively anyway. And whether there'd be one in the cloaking device is debatable but unlikely: they might have a scuttling charge or similar booby trap installed to prevent theft, but theft was not prevented, so that stage has already been skipped.

Timo Saloniemi
 
Oops...

...Or perhaps portable artillery, with the really loud voices coming from the poor saps doing the hauling.

Timo Saloniemi
 
Well, wouldn't the Romulans know how to see through their own cloaks? They developed the tech, so they'd know how it worked better than anyone.
 
...And they might thus know that it makes ships invisible. There is no evidence of it making ships selectively visible.

Let's try for the most direct analogy possible. Say the Romulans develop a new armor plate that cannot be pierced by death rays. Kirk steals it. What good does it do to Romulans that they know the nature of Kirk's armor? It didn't suddenly become more pierceable with that knowledge.

Timo Saloniemi
 
If the cloaking device is running through the Enterpise's deflector array, the frequency might be vastly different from that on a Romulan (or Klingon) starship, and thus make it difficult to just detect for the Romulans on short notice. Give them time and they might have been able to track Enterprise, but high warp speed, evasive maneuvers, and crossing back into Federation space sort of prevents the Romulans from having that time.

I still tend to think of the cloaking devices, at least of Kirk's era as high power consumption. Being tied into the engines is one thing. As for why it was the last thing to fail, I would think that would be a safety feature. The last thing you want to have happen is to be discovered by the enemy, so power is diverted there first after life support.
 
The high power costs of cloaking at least get support from Spock's stated conviction, no matter how misguided he might be. But there doesn't appear to be any support for the idea that Romulans would see through Romulan cloaks. It never happens in Star Trek - our Federation heroes can sometimes defeat Romulan or Klingon invisibility devices, but no Romulan explicitly defeats a Romulan cloak.

Theoretically, Romulans in "Balance of Terror" might know their cloaked ship can be tracked while maneuvering, and could do such tracking just as well as the heroes (or better, or worse, depending on their sensor-related skills). But the cloak in "The Enterprise Incident" cannot be tracked that way, and we never learn of another weakness in it.

Sure, at some point sensors no doubt will evolve to defeat this particular cloak model (as otherwise the Romulans wouldn't be interested in developing new models, and we do have reason to think they continue such R&D - even if our only explicit proof is about the phase cloak, which could be developed for unrelated reasons). And the Romulans might be the first to develop such sensors. But nothing dictates that they be there already during the ep.

Timo Saloniemi
 
And even if they could sense the Enterprise thru their cloak, remember how fast things were moving at that point. The Romulans had no reason to expect the E would be able to use the cloak, then suddenly the E cloaked, dodged, and ran away at warp NINE. Even if Tal had sensors that would have worked, he didn't have time to get them fired up and aimed.
 
johnnybear said:
Strange that human and Romulan technology was compatible! Maybe they launched their own Nomad probe into space two hundred years earlier as well? :p
JB
Click to expand...

In the Star Trek universe, all technology is magically compatible and even looks quite similar.

In my head canon, I've long toyed with the idea that there was some mysterious, secretive and advanced alien manufacturer of computers, communication tech, etc., that all the major powers bought or otherwise obtained a lot of their stuff from.

Kor
 
Well, we can always headcanon it that since Romulan technology is an offshoot of Vulcan technology, and Federation tech also sprang from Vulcan science then that's why there's compatibility.
 
Kor said:
In the Star Trek universe, all technology is magically compatible and even looks quite similar.

In my head canon, I've long toyed with the idea that there was some mysterious, secretive and advanced alien manufacturer of computers, communication tech, etc., that all the major powers bought or otherwise obtained a lot of their stuff from.

Kor
Click to expand...
The Progenitors programmed it into our DNA.
 
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I mean, they even have the exact same red hexagonal-pattern room dividers in their ships! :eek:

Kor
 
But Romulan Birds of Prey seemed to be quite small inside compared to the larger Klingon design they use later on!
JB
 
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