Cloaks and Torpedos

[Timo]

I'm not sure I understood any of that.

A "vectoring plane"? What is that?

Using antigravity or artificial gravity would broadcast the mine's position? Well, possibly, but only if it were constantly turned on. A mine using gravity as a warhead or as a means of limpeting onto the target would only activate the gravity systems moments before hitting the target.

"!Primary power output would be constant"? Whose? The mine's? Why?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Cary L. Brown]

It might well be a balancing act involving minimum size and maximum energy signature. We know that the mines can cloak, and they aren't very large - but a small cloak might suffice for hiding their minimal energy signature.

Agreed, and this likely explains the low effectiveness of the "cloaked mines" seen in ENT.

(Of course, this begs the issue of how "Ent" Romulans had cloaking technology and yet the presence of cloaking technology in "Balance of Terror" came as a near total surprise... in other words, to be "canon," the ENT Romulans should not have had cloaking at all!)

But, if you can ignore that for the moment, then you're able to see why a "cloaked mine" would be roughly equivalent in yield to a modern naval mine... the overwhelming majority of the volume of the weapon would be power generation and cloaking technology, with the "weapon" element of this added almost as an afterthought, in whatever tiny gaps were left over.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

The real question is, why would you want to cloak a torpedo?

In order to hide where it is fired from.

Even Chang's cloakship revealed her position every time she fired, which would allow a fast, TNG-standard fire control system to lay blanketing fire and hurt the attacker a lot. If the torpedo left the ship under cloak, and only became visible after putting some distance between itself and the firing vessel, plus doing a dogleg, then the fire control system would have no idea where to aim.

Well, while your first point is very valid, your second isn't, really.

As I've become fond of saying... space is big. Really, really big.

By contrast, a ship is small... really, really small.

At best, you might see, just for a moment, where a ship is, and might be able to project a statistical "probability cone" from that measurement, but within milliseconds, the odds of a hit would become essentially zero.

So, the idea of a "blanketing fire" region is essentially useless in real-world, real-scale terms. Unless you fire at EXACTLY the instant that you see the torpedo-firing ship, and your fire arrives at essentially that same time (meaning phasers but not torpedos), you're never going to stand a chance of a hit.

You can't "blanket fire cover" a region of space consisting of millions of cubic kilometers. And that's what we're talking about for the speeds at which Trek ships generally maneuver.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The real question is, why would you want to cloak a torpedo?

In order to hide where it is fired from.

Even Chang's cloakship revealed her position every time she fired

So did the Scimitar, but that didn't aid in targeting even with the "most advanced ship in the fleet."

My point is, the complexity and expense of cloaking a torpedo is probably better invested in developing a more reliable cloaking device for your SHIP. The blanketing fire in "Balance of Terror" was only possible because the cloaked vessel still registered on their sensors, and though the Enterprise couldn't get a precise fix on its location, they had a general enough determination of bearing and distance that they only had to blanket a relatively small area of space.

By contrast, a momentary fix on an invisible target isn't enough to target it, even if you have a very good estimate of where it will be next. Take, for example, "The Arsenal of Freedom" where Worf is able to calculate the EP607's firing pattern based on its past behavior, but without a phaser lock still isn't able to hit it. They wind up luring the thing into the upper atmosphere where ionization against the skin renders it visible for several seconds, long enough to get a target lock and destroy it. This is consistent with "Generations" where Worf tells Riker that it takes between eight and fifteen seconds to lock onto a small target when you don't know where it'll be launching from.

Here's a thought: if firing a torpedo leaves you visible for a full eight seconds, you probably shouldn't bother trying to fire while cloaked; it takes less time than that to decloak and then raise your shields. In that case, this might finally explain why Klingon and Romulan ships never developed the ability to fire while cloaked: you loose your stealth advantage the instant you open fire, but if you decloak quickly enough you can still sucker-punch your enemies AND get your shields up before he can shoot back.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

The real question is, why would you want to cloak a torpedo?

In order to hide where it is fired from.

Even Chang's cloakship revealed her position every time she fired

So did the Scimitar, but that didn't aid in targeting even with the "most advanced ship in the fleet."

My point is, the complexity and expense of cloaking a torpedo is probably better invested in developing a more reliable cloaking device for your SHIP.

There is a great reason for having cloaked torpedos...

The target doesn't know that a weapon is incoming. They may have no defenses up at all (in which case, this would be a "one-hit, one-kill" weapon). And if they do have defenses up, and one shield is weakened, they'd have no way of knowing which way to maneuver to avoid having that shield impacted by incoming fire. In other words, it would make for a far, far more effective weapons system overall.

In addition... well, in Trek we've never seen anything resembling the modern Phalanx system, which is modern naval vessel's primary anti-missile defense system (basically a multi-barrel machine gun that fills an entire region of the sky with a wall of lead to intercept incoming missiles).

But, suppose that someone actually does have a point-defense system able to defend against incoming missiles (and a torpedo is merely a subcategory of missile as far as I'm concerned).

That system would become useless if you can't target the incoming missiles...

So, there are two major OFFENSIVE advantages for cloaked missile systems.

But, I do agree, there are almost no DEFENSIVE advantages for cloaked missile systems.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

In order to hide where it is fired from.

Even Chang's cloakship revealed her position every time she fired

So did the Scimitar, but that didn't aid in targeting even with the "most advanced ship in the fleet."

My point is, the complexity and expense of cloaking a torpedo is probably better invested in developing a more reliable cloaking device for your SHIP.

There is a great reason for having cloaked torpedos...

The target doesn't know that a weapon is incoming. They may have no defenses up at all (in which case, this would be a "one-hit, one-kill" weapon). And if they do have defenses up, and one shield is weakened, they'd have no way of knowing which way to maneuver to avoid having that shield impacted by incoming fire. In other words, it would make for a far, far more effective weapons system overall.

True, but unless we're talking about TOS/Early TNG technology, you can still count on sucker-punching your enemy just by decloaking at the perfect moment. This is basically what happened to the Bortas at the start of the Klingon Civil War, and is VERY likely what happened to the Enterprise-C when Captain Garret was killed. In neither case was it a one-shot kill, however.

In addition... well, in Trek we've never seen anything resembling the modern Phalanx system

Except in NuTrek, where a cloaked torpedo might actually have some benefit (I'm now convinced that the only real advantage of the Narada's torpedoes was the abnormally high yield of their sub-munitions). And a universe that features phasers as point-defense weapons opens the door to all kinds of other freakishly realistic weapons: starship-launched cruise missiles, for example, which MAY be cloaked, allowing for stealthy and clandestine bombing of targets deep within enemy space. That is exactly the sort of weapon I could see the Romulans playing with, but so useful not as a ship-to-ship weapon.

 

[blssdwlf]

Funny enough, TOS used phasers as defensive weapons in "Balance of Terror", "For the World is Hollow and I've Touched the Sky" and "Patterns of Force". The latter two are against missiles that they've been tracking for a while, but the first example, Kirk snaps the order to fire phasers at point-blank and they take out the Romulan mine at the last moment. However, later one they just relied on shields to take the hit and saved the phaser power for offensive fire. Go figure

Oh yeah, there was a TNG episode where they rapidly acquired and destroyed a Ferengi missile before it hit a wormhole (IIRC). The first shot missed, but the second hit it.

 

[Timo]

Also, ST2 dialogue strongly suggests Kirk wants Sulu to shoot down one of Khan's torpedoes.

The ST:NEM battle did show the Scimitar getting hit after revealing her position by firing. However, our heroes and their Romulan backup for some reason fired torpedoes and disruptor bolts that were too slow to score decisive hits before the Scimitar changed course. Phasers would have been a more efficient response there!

Dodging in milliseconds and creating an uncertainty of millions of cubic kilometers isn't Trek reality, though. It takes easily ten seconds of screen time for a large cloakship to maneuver to "safety" in episodes like "Redemption" - a rare case of maneuverability being an asset in Star Trek, as the Echo Papa contraption wouldn't have been similarly jeopardized. Even if we assume that space battles are shown in 1:10 slow motion, we only manage to convince ourselves that the defending ship could fire fifty blanketing phaser shots within the first couple of seconds by using normal strip phasers only, without a need for super-CIWS. That's easily enough to score a lucky hit, which breeds more lucky hits, until the attacker is dust. Cloakship fights by their very nature are point blank affairs, closely analogous to destroyer/submarine fights.

However, phasers and fire control systems from the 23rd century might well have been unable to pour out the required fire. "BoT" shows how the ship's phasers are extremely prone to breakdown from use... And while STXI shows rapid fire weapons in action as the Kelvin defends herself, the white bolts (ENT style plasma guns?) don't manage to hit anything much. Shooting down torps may be doable at suitable ranges, with suitable warning. Responding to cloakship pounces may not.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Transk53]

I'm not sure I understood any of that.

A "vectoring plane"? What is that?

Using antigravity or artificial gravity would broadcast the mine's position? Well, possibly, but only if it were constantly turned on. A mine using gravity as a warhead or as a means of limpeting onto the target would only activate the gravity systems moments before hitting the target.

"!Primary power output would be constant"? Whose? The mine's? Why?

Timo Saloniemi

Basically I was thinking (my mind is different) that a Ship would be scanning for things like gravity changes, debris and such like as a normal routine. A Fed ship would have that as a routine I believed. Well, at least it made sense to me. As such a cloaked device would be picked up.

The Vectoring Plane I borrowed from another Sci-Fi Series simply because at the time I was thinking the previous post, that just became analogous to my mind.

Anyway you guys know your stuff, But I can't figure how a swarm weapon would be able to do anything other than go straight and hope it hits. Surely without sufficient power systems, a ship could simply point its nose up and fly over them. Hence my thoughts on a constant power output.

 

[Timo]

Mines don't aim to block a ship's path. They aim to occasionally happen on a ship's path, so that a ship has to live in constant fear of being damaged by a mine even when the actual risk of a hit is very low.

The stealth of a mine wouldn't be much jeopardized by a starship's scanning efforts, because even if something did leak through a cloak, that would only help in frightening the ship; the enemy could sow a minefield where 99% of the "mines" were harmless and cheap false emitters, and that would stop the ship dead on her tracks just as well as a field of 100% explosive devices. In any case, starships have a poor track record in detecting small, deadly but ultimately detectable objects - one hit Kirk's ship in "Balance of Terror", several hurt Archer's in "Minefield", and even the approximate or accurate knowledge of a cloakship's position did Kirk little or no good in "BoT" or ST3.

IMHO, it was perfectly realistic of the Klingons to "mine shut" the Bajoran system in "Sons of Mogh", even with completely passive mines that only had an explosive radius of a few thousand kilometers; a few hundred thousand of those would be credible enough a threat. Add the ability to approach the victim ship via gravitic pull triggered at the last moment, and the range could well be extended more than tenfold without enlarging the warhead.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Transk53]

Add the ability to approach the victim ship via gravitic pull triggered at the last moment

I guess the mine would still be imprecise, but yeah they would dish out some pain for sure. The target vessel would pull the mine in by momentum and grivitational shifts.

Except in NuTrek, where a cloaked torpedo might actually have some benefit (I'm now convinced that the only real advantage of the Narada's torpedoes was the abnormally high yield of their sub-munitions). And a universe that features phasers as point-defense weapons opens the door to all kinds of other freakishly realistic weapons: starship-launched cruise missiles, for example, which MAY be cloaked, allowing for stealthy and clandestine bombing of targets deep within enemy space. That is exactly the sort of weapon I could see the Romulans playing with, but so useful not as a ship-to-ship weapon.

Do you think that could also include Mass Driver Projectiles?

 

[UncleRice]

If photon torpedoes can't be cloaked, long range high yield cruise missiles with cloaking devices should be possible. The Cardassian Dreadnought comes to mind. Even if you couldn't use shields and cloaking at the same time, a shuttle sized missile you couldn't see loaded with all the antimatter you could stuff on board would be a weapon to be reckoned with. (Interplanetary Missiles anyone?)

Far as that goes a 2 ton missile slamming into a planet at .25c and no anti-matter would knock a planet into an ice age, but that's another discussion.

 

[Transk53]

Far as that goes a 2 ton missile slamming into a planet at .25c and no anti-matter would knock a planet into an ice age, but that's another discussion

Please continue.

 

[tighr]

I mentioned Dreadnought earlier as the perfect vehicle for a cloaked missile.

Far as that goes a 2 ton missile slamming into a planet at .25c and no anti-matter would knock a planet into an ice age, but that's another discussion.

I hadn't thought of that. Who needs a payload when all you need to do is guide the missile directly at the planet. Artificial meteor, with better shields.

IPBM? Inter-Planetary Ballistic Missile?

 

[Cary L. Brown]

I mentioned Dreadnought earlier as the perfect vehicle for a cloaked missile.

Far as that goes a 2 ton missile slamming into a planet at .25c and no anti-matter would knock a planet into an ice age, but that's another discussion.

I hadn't thought of that. Who needs a payload when all you need to do is guide the missile directly at the planet. Artificial meteor, with better shields.

IPBM? Inter-Planetary Ballistic Missile?

You mean like was done in Babylon 5? The Centauri just threw big rocks at the Narn homeworld, and literally did "bomb it back into the stone age" that way.

Babylon 5 wasn't perfect, but it sure did do things that Trek would never have so much as considered, didn't it?

 

[Sandoval]

Babylon 5 wasn't perfect, but it sure did do things that Trek would never have so much as considered, didn't it?

Voyager's 'Rise' features asteroids being hurled deliberately at a planet.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

Babylon 5 wasn't perfect, but it sure did do things that Trek would never have so much as considered, didn't it?

Voyager's 'Rise' features asteroids being hurled deliberately at a planet.

A "planet of the week," though... not a major player's world.

DS9, eventually, did some "exciting" things, and ENT (in the third season) finally started to do some exciting things. But TNG and VOY really didn't. There was never any feel, in either series, that there was any real jeopardy.

(OK, TNG did this once, with "Best of Both Worlds Pt.1," but they basically wasted the opportunity... the end of BoBW left me with a bad taste in my mouth. AT LEAST they should have let Picard not be recovered... or done SOMETHING that gave up real, in-story consequences we'd care about! Picard was right back in his captain's chair... which really, really bothered me.)

"Rise" toyed with the idea, but it wasn't really consequential. (I saw this episode just a few days ago... I've finally decided to "Netflix" Voyager, since I never saw much of it on-air.)

Voyager really had a few "pseudo-consequential" events... but none that have any long-term impact on the Star Trek world.

Enterprise did a lot more, but we knew that (barring "temporal cold war" issues) everything was going to end up how the production team imagined it "always had."

Babylon 5 took one of the main races and just devastated them... and kept us watching the results of this devastation for the remainder of the series. That's what I'm talking about when I talk about "risks."

(Of course, you can carry that too far... destroying Vulcan in a movie, just for pure "shock value," isn't something I'd ever have done, and not something I approve of. The destruction of Vulcan in ST'09 was just there as "setup" to create the concern over saving EARTH, after all, and served very little other story-telling function.)

 

[tighr]

Voyager really had a few "pseudo-consequential" events... but none that have any long-term impact on the Star Trek world.

Brutally crippling the Borg in the Voyager series finale doesn't count as having a long-term impact? (I guess since there wasn't another series afterwards, the ramifications weren't as obvious as the season 4 TNG opener BOBW, but still impactful).

And, it could be argued that any new Star Trek series set in the prime universe in the future, when the Federation has the technology to return to the Delta Quadrant, may find a multitude of races that have embraced the Federations ideals and started a Delta Quadrant Federation (and may find a few races who hate the Federation due to Voyager's influence, as well).

But I agree with your main premise that Voyager was weak and all too often returned to the status quo and the end of every episode.

 

[UncleRice]

Far as that goes a 2 ton missile slamming into a planet at .25c and no anti-matter would knock a planet into an ice age, but that's another discussion

Please continue.

It's called a relativistic kill vehicle. According to my calculations, a 2 ton craft going at full impulse (.25c) that slams directly into a planet would be an explosion on the magnitude of about 1,423 megatons. In comparison, the last Yellowstone super volcano eruption was about 600 megatons and the most powerful nuke "Tzar Bomba" could have produced 100 megatons but that much power scared the Soviets, so the hobbled it to about 50 megatons. No, if you want to knock a planet back into the stone age, you don't need thousands of isotons of antimatter. you just need a good cloaking device. and full impulse.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Except in NuTrek, where a cloaked torpedo might actually have some benefit (I'm now convinced that the only real advantage of the Narada's torpedoes was the abnormally high yield of their sub-munitions). And a universe that features phasers as point-defense weapons opens the door to all kinds of other freakishly realistic weapons: starship-launched cruise missiles, for example, which MAY be cloaked, allowing for stealthy and clandestine bombing of targets deep within enemy space. That is exactly the sort of weapon I could see the Romulans playing with, but so useful not as a ship-to-ship weapon.

Do you think that could also include Mass Driver Projectiles?

Maybe as a long-range terror weapon (the Trek equivalent of the V2 missile) but not as a precision/standoff weapon.