Cloaking Devices and The Pact

[Christopher]

Shouldn't the Federation now have access to cloaking tech through their allies in the Imperial Romulan State?

The Federation has had access to the technology since "The Enterprise Incident," and its scientists could easily keep up with the later advances in the tech if they tried to. But in the Treaty of Algeron, they agreed not to develop or use cloaking technology, presumably in exchange for concessions from the Romulans. And as I've said, I think the reason they were willing to do so is that cloaking tech isn't really compatible with the normal operations and mission profiles of Starfleet vessels.

 

[David R. George III]

Shouldn't the Federation now have access to cloaking tech through their allies in the Imperial Romulan State?

While the Federation recognized the Imperial Romulan State, that does not make the two powers allies. I believe UFP President Bacco and her government have considered, or begun to consider, such an alliance, owing to the emergence of the Typhon Pact, but at least as of the events of A Singular Destiny, that hadn't happened yet.

 

[Christopher]

^I guess you meant to say "that does not make the two powers allies."

 

[Rush Limborg]

Wait...as of the expansion of the Khitomer Accords...aren't they allies, now?

 

[ares93]

Wait...as of the expansion of the Khitomer Accords...aren't they allies, now?

indeed, they are. tight as two cellmates after lockdown.

 

[Christopher]

Wait...as of the expansion of the Khitomer Accords...aren't they allies, now?

The expansion of the Khitomer Accords is merely something that President Bacco said she was inviting the other governments to talk about. It's only been presented as a possibility, not an actuality.

 

[BXsainttj]

so the technology and schematics are there but i would take it as the federation believes it is above using such a device. Unless a last resort scenario. Like the thaleron radtion (sp? name?) weapon that shinzon had and picard wanted to use but la forge told him no (resistance?) And the Defiant could only use it in the Gamma Quadrant am i right? dam now i have to go back and watch the last 3 seasons of DS9 again.

 

[Almost Unique]

dam now i have to go back and watch the last 3 seasons of DS9 again.

Oh, don't put yourself thru that!

I don't remember exactly what the terms were, but Defiant having a cloak was some kind of special arrangement. The Romulans even sent T'Rul (Martha Hackett) to babysit in the Season 3 opener.

I'm pretty sure they used the cloak in the Alpha Quadrant at least a time or two...don't recall if they were being bad or not.

 

[JD]

I'm pretty sure they did, either during the Dominion War or the conflict with the Klingons, but I'm not positive which one.

 

[DimesDan]

I'm pretty sure they did, either during the Dominion War or the conflict with the Klingons, but I'm not positive which one.

It was used in Way of the Warrior to not draw attention from the Klingons while helping out Gul Dukat and the politicians that were escaping from Cardassia Prime.

 

[JD]

That was my first thought, but then I second guessed myself.

 

[Galileo7]

I think the point is that it's not the size of the ship that matters but the energy emissions a cloak would have to mask.

Right. Presumably all Klingon warships are similarly bare-bones and stripped down in their power usage; they don't have science labs, science-oriented sensors, holodecks, bars, arboretums, day care centers, etc. using up energy. They're strictly for combat and lacking in luxuries. So while I find it implausible that a ship as large as the Negh'Var or a Romulan D'Deridex Warbird could be effectively cloaked (or indeed have any reason to be built at all), it's more plausible than it would be for a multifunction, luxury-equipped Starfleet vessel like a Galaxy-class ship.

But didn't the Ent-D successfully use the Phase cloak in "Pegasus", without power issues. With enough refinement it would be possible.

In the Star Trek universe, it is insane that all federation starfleet ships are not equipped with a cloaking device(no matter what problems they might have) as a last resort usage option. Especially, since Kirk acquired one from the Romulans in TOS "Enterprise Incident". The treaty that the Federation starfleet can not have them is like having a treaty that your military can not have guns while your enemies(Romulans, Klingons) can....simply creating an unfair fight. It was farce when Picard(like a traitor) tells the Romulans about the federation researched & developed phasing cloaking device...Kirk never would have. Ultimately, we saw many NG and DS9 episodes were the federation's enemies used their cloaking device. The Romulans would probably have acquired the federation cloaking device technology and used it to conquer the federation. Only Picard would hand such a weapon to the enemy, it should have been the main story element of the movie NEMESIS with Picard having to deal with the mistake he made in the "Pegasus" incident. On DS9 Sisko showed the Defiant's might by using (with the Romulan permission...ridiculous) it's cloaking devices.

 

[Christopher]

In the Star Trek universe, it is insane that all federation starfleet ships are not equipped with a cloaking device(no matter what problems they might have) as a last resort usage option. Especially, since Kirk acquired one from the Romulans in TOS "Enterprise Incident".

Well, that doesn't follow, since there's more than one kind of cloaking device. Look at all the separate times that cloaks have been penetrated but then a story set later depicted them as impenetrable. Daniels showed NX-01 how to penetrate Suliban cloaks, and it worked against the Romulan cloaks of the era as well, but then in TOS, cloaks were little-understood and impenetrable. The "Balance of Terror" cloak could be detected on motion sensors but the "Enterprise Incident" cloak couldn't. The Klingon cloak in ST III created a visible ripple effect, but later cloaks didn't. Spock figured out how to penetrate the Klingon cloak in ST VI, but in TNG Starfleet couldn't see through cloaks. (Also, the ST VI cloak could be fired through but TNG-era cloaks could not.) And so on.

The only logical conclusion is that cloaking devices are not a single technology, but a whole category of technologies. One kind of cloak comes along, gets penetrated, and is rendered useless, so another kind of cloak is developed and used until it gets penetrated, and so on. It's an ongoing race between stealth and detection, just as one would realistically expect.

So the fact that Starfleet once obtained a vintage-2268 cloak has no bearing on whether they'd have feasible cloaking technology in the 2370s or '80s. Heck, surely the Romulans would've been able to figure out how to penetrate their own cloaking tech, so that cloak was probably rendered obsolete as soon as it was stolen. It's likely that the intent of stealing the cloaking device was not so much so that Starfleet could use it as so that Starfleet could study it and figure out how to counter it. (And yes, the Enterprise was able to cloak and evade the Romulans, but only for a matter of moments. I find it hard to believe the Romulans wouldn't know how to penetrate their own cloaking device, or wouldn't quickly figure it out once Starfleet stole it.)

And that could be why Starfleet ships don't have cloaks as "last-resort" measures: because they wouldn't do much good since the likely enemies would already know how to penetrate them.

Of course, if we really wanted to bring realism into it, then the whole idea of cloaking devices would have to be scuttled, since it's a thermodynamic impossibility. Every ship generates heat, and that heat has to be radiated out into space or the crew gets cooked. If you're in atmosphere or water, you have a mechanism to shunt the heat away quickly and blend in, but in the vacuum of space, any heat source is going to stick out like a sore thumb. The only way to rationalize cloaks in Trek is by assuming they somehow shunt a ship's waste heat into subspace or something. Which should still make them penetrable by a starship with subspace sensors.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

Starfleet is supposed to be an expert at seeing through cloaks - after a century of cat-and-mouse game between its sensors and romulan/klingon cloaks - and starfleet's best sensors can barely detect a cloaked romulan ship from a very short range (as of Typhon Pact: Zero Sum Game).
Its enemies don't fare better when it comes to seeing through foreign cloaks.

Of course, a cloak doesn't have to be perfect in order to be a HUGE advantage.
Present day american aircraft stealth technology is FAR less efficient at hiding planes than a cloak is, and it's a huge tactical/strategical asset.

Star trek cloaking tech is FAR better than this present day equivalent.
We're talking about an advantage that, in times of war, would enable its possesor to destroy 10 enemy ships for every one lost by him.

As for thermodynamics - yes, a ship will produce heat.
But the fundamental physical laws allow the amount of produced heat to be arbitrarily small (of course, practically, this is as good as impossible to achieve).
Even more important, nothing prevents a ship from radiating its heat unidirectionally - as in, in the direction opposite the enemy ships' location. This translates, of course, in de facto thermodynamical invisibility.

 

[Shon T'Hara]

Isn't cloaking technology on the verge of becoming a dead letter? Given how much energy slipstream drives use, they're almost certainly incompatible with cloaking devices -- you can go really fast, or you can be invisible, but not both at once. Once other races work out slipstreaming, cloaks won't be useful for anything other than lurking about. I suppose you could still launch a sneak attack with cloaked ships at traditional warp velocities, but there's the risk the other side can see through it, whereas if you use slipstream you know exactly how much warning the enemy will have.

 

[Angstromdweller]

What about an "internal emission sink", as featured in the Mass Effect games? Store the heat temporarily and vent it later.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

Isn't cloaking technology on the verge of becoming a dead letter? Given how much energy slipstream drives use, they're almost certainly incompatible with cloaking devices -- you can go really fast, or you can be invisible, but not both at once. Once other races work out slipstreaming, cloaks won't be useful for anything other than lurking about. I suppose you could still launch a sneak attack with cloaked ships at traditional warp velocities, but there's the risk the other side can see through it, whereas if you use slipstream you know exactly how much warning the enemy will have.

About slip-stream:
In 'Zero sum game' (the latest book in the trek lit universe) it is established that, as per the federation's best estimates, the other major powers in the quadrant shouldn't be able to develop slip-stream tech on their own in less than 10 years.

It is further established that, in light of the losses starfleet suffered during the borg genocide (40% of starfleet destroyed, among others), if any power develops slip-stream sooner the federation will become a second-rate power in less than a year.

Given these, I don't think the writers will give slip-stream to anyone else for the foreseeable future.

About cloak:
The same book establishes that, historically, the romulans wielded a power disproportionalte to their numbers due to their cloaks.

About slip-stream capabilities vs cloaks capabilities:
As per the book, cloaks DO retain their advantages - relating to being pratically undetectable, surprise attacks, etc.

Slip-stream allows you only to escape if you're outnumbered. A starship at slip-stream can still be seen, blockaded against, shot down, etc.

 

[BrotherBenny]

Of course, if we really wanted to bring realism into it, then the whole idea of cloaking devices would have to be scuttled, since it's a thermodynamic impossibility. Every ship generates heat, and that heat has to be radiated out into space or the crew gets cooked. If you're in atmosphere or water, you have a mechanism to shunt the heat away quickly and blend in, but in the vacuum of space, any heat source is going to stick out like a sore thumb. The only way to rationalize cloaks in Trek is by assuming they somehow shunt a ship's waste heat into subspace or something. Which should still make them penetrable by a starship with subspace sensors.

Why can't the waste heat be converted into energy for the cloaking field?

 

[ProtoAvatar]

Of course, if we really wanted to bring realism into it, then the whole idea of cloaking devices would have to be scuttled, since it's a thermodynamic impossibility. Every ship generates heat, and that heat has to be radiated out into space or the crew gets cooked. If you're in atmosphere or water, you have a mechanism to shunt the heat away quickly and blend in, but in the vacuum of space, any heat source is going to stick out like a sore thumb. The only way to rationalize cloaks in Trek is by assuming they somehow shunt a ship's waste heat into subspace or something. Which should still make them penetrable by a starship with subspace sensors.

Why can't the waste heat be converted into energy for the cloaking field?

It is about thermodynamics.

Whenever one performs work - whenever energy, in any form, is used - energy flows from a part of a physical system to another and part of this energy is transfprmed into heat.

And this resulting 'heat' is fundamentally unusable.
Why?
Because the heat has the same temperature throughout your system, thus, you can't make this heat flow from a part of your system to another..
Think of it as trying to make water flow between two containers, in both of which the water is at the same level.

Entropy, thus, increases - the endpoint of which being, all energy in the universe was transformed into heat and everything becomes static, unchanging - the so-called heat death of the universe.

These physical laws are absolutely fundamental, they cannot be broken - just as 2+2 cannot equal 5.

 

[Christopher]

^Exactly. Entropy is fundamental. No matter how miraculously advanced your technology gets, you're still gonna have waste heat. The only way to harness that heat is by doing work, which will generate more waste heat. Entropy can only be reversed locally at the cost of increasing entropy elsewhere in the system. The total amount of waste heat in the overall system is always going to go up.

But a ship in vacuum is essentially a closed system. You can't take away its heat in exchange for more heat "somewhere else," because there is no "somewhere else" -- all the equipment you have is right there on the ship itself. So the only way to deal with the heat is to radiate it out into space, which makes you detectable. Unless you have some kind of a wormhole connecting you to another dimension or another place so you can dump your heat into...

(blink)

Hmm. Romulan ships have singularities in them, don't they?

EDIT: No, that won't work, since matter falling into a singularity emits radiation and therefore heat.