is it ethical for the federation to not use cloaking technology?

[Ithekro]

Far as I can tell, no. They seem to be stretching out the years prior to 2379 until the Kelvin Universe runs its course (after seeing if they get a fourth film) Or perhaps to see in Star Trek: Discovery messes with it at all before moving onward (either ignoring the destruction of Romulas or using it and keeping to say the Star Trek Online timeline).

 

[MAGolding]

the tech could save so many damn lives. do they have it written in some hard wired set-in-stone important treaty that they can't use cloaking technology? it's so useful, to me it's like sending a ship out without phasers. the defiants cloak made things possible the other main ships just couldn't do. it would probably avert alot of battles, make the klingons and romulans more wary and thus more likely to be peaceful imho

It is a an interesting question, to ask if it is unethical to not use a specific weapons system. A far more usual type of question is to ask if it is ethical to use a specific weapons system.

Scribble said:

Could there be a reasonable rationale behind the Treaty? Of course. But on the surface, without knowing the details, it does appear to be a little like agreeing to have both of your hands tied behind your back just before your boxing match.

Since the other terms of the Treaty are never mentioned, it is very hard to tell if the no cloaking device clause was good for the Federation. A peace treaty is usually at the end of a war, and might possibly prevent any future war between the two parties. To use your analogy, a peace treaty is like saying the the boxing match is over and we hope there will never be a rematch.

Almael said:

Disregarding what ever political reasons.
Cloaking is highly expensive to build and maintain. Any little thing that is off could compromise it. And requires huge amount of energy, hence, fuel. You are wasting a lot of economic resources on it in preparation for a war that may come or not.
Now take a look at real world examples.
....2. Babylon the greatest walled fortress city of the time never saw battle either. It's inhabitant simply open their gates for Alexander...The lesson: huge resource waste in "sure" fire military things never pays of if you don't understand situations and strategy.

After Babylon was rebuilt by Nebuchadnezzar it was captured by the Persians, or perhaps simply surrendered to them, in 539 BC.

Posts number 10 and number 13 have opposite speculations about the course of the war that the Treaty of Algeron ended. The Treaty of Algeron was signed after the Tomed Incident, and from what I know it is possible that there wasn't even a war during the Tomed incident.

 

[velour]

There seems to be much emphasis on the military applications of cloak technology.

Cloaking technology could have been used in Starfleet's peaceful exploration missions. Starfleet has the prime directive. If Starfleet didn't want to interfere or contaminate pre-warp civilizations, cloaking technology would have been useful to hide their ships, their machinery and whatever else Starfleet didn't want the natives to see.

In TVH, Kirk obviously didn't want to expose paranoid 20th century Earthlings to "real" UFOs, yet he wanted a convenient spot in the middle of San Francisco to park the Klingon ship. He wouldn't have been able to do that without a cloaking device.

In STID, the Enterprise hid itself underwater. Water is corrosive. Wouldn't it have been better if the Enterprise had been cloaked? if it was legal, that is.

Maybe the Feds had lousy negotiators. They were shortsighted in not seeing a peaceful use of cloak. There are badly negotiated trade deals, could the treaty of algeron had been a badly negotiated deal?

 

[DonIago]

I have a hard time believing that futuristic starships could be seriously corroded by water...

 

[Tomalak]

Maybe the Feds had lousy negotiators. They were shortsighted in not seeing a peaceful use of cloak. There are badly negotiated trade deals, could the treaty of algeron had been a badly negotiated deal?

You seem to suggest the Federation was negotiating from a position of strength, but there's no real evidence of that. We don't know what the circumstances of the Tomed Incident were, but it was sufficiently grave that the Romulans retreated behind the Neutral Zone.

Not having cloaks wasn't a particularly great disadvantage for the Federation - they had decades to develop them between The Enterprise Incident and the Treaty of Algeron and apparently didn't do so. Most other species don't bother with them either.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

There seems to be much emphasis on the military applications of cloak technology.

Cloaking technology could have been used in Starfleet's peaceful exploration missions. Starfleet has the prime directive. If Starfleet didn't want to interfere or contaminate pre-warp civilizations, cloaking technology would have been useful to hide their ships, their machinery and whatever else Starfleet didn't want the natives to see.

That's just it, Starfleet doesn't seem to have any problem using some form of invisibility for that purpose. They have holographic technology that can hide whole starships, they can jam less advanced sensors and avoid detection through more conventional means. The cloaking device as stealth technology really only has military applications since it's designed to prevent detection at extremely close range, thus facilitating an attacking vessel to get into firing position before its enemy can defend itself.

Starfleet only operates in two kinds of places:
- Civilizations that are advanced enough to pose a threat, in which case sneaking around behind their backs is a violation of their airspace and definitely illegal, unethical and unacceptable
- Civilizations that are not advanced enough to pose a threat, in which case hiding your ship is usually pretty easy.

Nibiru is an example of the latter, and hiding the Enterprise close to the island only became necessary because of the volcano's weird magnetic field and they didn't have time to McGuyver something more clever like a holographic screen or something.

Defiant's mission in the Delta Quadrant is an example of the former, with the Jem'Hadar taking the ship's presence in their space rather personally. That's not the kind of operation Starfleet would normally sanction, so it's no surprise that it backfired so spectacularly.

In TVH, Kirk obviously didn't want to expose paranoid 20th century Earthlings to "real" UFOs, yet he wanted a convenient spot in the middle of San Francisco to park the Klingon ship. He wouldn't have been able to do that without a cloaking device.

Why he needed to land in San Francisco in the first place is something of a mystery. It's not like the Klingon ship didn't have transporters or something, he could have just as easily left the ship in orbit instead of sitting in the middle of Golden Gate Park for some soccer players to accidentally discover it.

Maybe the Feds had lousy negotiators. They were shortsighted in not seeing a peaceful use of cloak. There are badly negotiated trade deals, could the treaty of algeron had been a badly negotiated deal?

It's just more likely that the cloaking device isn't all that useful of a device for any purpose except for ambush attacks.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

It's just more likely that the cloaking device isn't all that useful of a device for any purpose except for ambush attacks.

The Federation successfully used cloaking devices for other purposes, like that time they borrowed a Klingon Bird of Prey to sneak over to Romulus without being detected in "Unification I." So, that would be a "no."

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The Federation successfully used cloaking devices for other purposes, like that time they borrowed a Klingon Bird of Prey to sneak over to Romulus without being detected in "Unification I." So, that would be a "no."

Doubtful the bird of prey was necessary by virtue of its cloaking device; more likely they just needed plausible deniability in case the ship got detected. The idea that Romulan sensors would be unable to detect a cloaked Klingon ship in orbit of their own homeworld is actually pretty laughable, since it implies that the Klingons have the ability to attack Romulan targets at will and should be whupping their asses all up and down the quadrant by now.

Put another way: if the cloaking device was THAT big of a strategic advantage, half the Federation would be speaking Romulan and the other half would be speaking Klingon. Hell, "Discovery" even touched that issue EXPLICITLY and made it clear that the cloaking device WOULD have been a military gamechanger if Starfleet hadn't figured out how to reliably defeat it.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Doubtful the bird of prey was necessary by virtue of its cloaking device; more likely they just needed plausible deniability in case the ship got detected. The idea that Romulan sensors would be unable to detect a cloaked Klingon ship in orbit of their own homeworld is actually pretty laughable, since it implies that the Klingons have the ability to attack Romulan targets at will and should be whupping their asses all up and down the quadrant by now.

Put another way: if the cloaking device was THAT big of a strategic advantage, half the Federation would be speaking Romulan and the other half would be speaking Klingon. Hell, "Discovery" even touched that issue EXPLICITLY and made it clear that the cloaking device WOULD have been a military gamechanger if Starfleet hadn't figured out how to reliably defeat it.

Nah, it makes more sense to suppose that Picard was being truthful when he said that they needed a ship with a cloak, and accordingly that it was in order to utilize an effective cloak. Picard's function in narrative often as an expositor aside, there's no reason to suppose that the Romulans would allow an alien ship that they detected orbiting their homeworld to go unchallenged; ergo they didn't detect it.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Nah, it makes more sense to suppose that Picard was being truthful when he said that they needed a ship with a cloak, and accordingly that it was in order to utilize an effective cloak. Picard's function in narrative often as an expositor aside, there's no reason to suppose that the Romulans would allow an alien ship that they detected orbiting their homeworld to go unchallenged; ergo they didn't detect it.

I get all that, I'm saying that the ability of the Klingons to actually remain undetected by the Romulans is problematic from a worldbuilding standpoint, given the two species' rivalry over the years. The attacks on Khitomer and Narendra III, for example, definitely would have triggered punitive raids -- if not full scale war -- from the Klingon side. We know already that the Federation's ability to defeat Romulan cloaks is (at least as far as their own borders) prevents an attack, and their being allies with the Klingons prevents an attack from their side. But between the Romulans and the Klingons, the ability of one species to reliably penetrate the others' defenses has far greater implications.

Put it this way: if the Klingons had the ability to put a cloaked bird of prey in orbit of Romulus without anybody noticing, then nothing prevents them from putting a HUNDRED of them in orbit of Romulus. They essentially have first-strike capability and the capacity to decapitate the entire Romulan government in one strike. And these are Klingons we're talking about, they have no social or moral hangups that would prevent it.

 

[Bry_Sinclair]

After "Pegasus" I don't know why Starfleet didn't pursue phasing technology. Cloaks are illegal under the treaty but nothings been said about a phasing device, that would save countless lives.

 

[Timo]

I don't see the Romulans splitting hairs there. The phasing trick makes you invisible as an unavoidable side effect. If it's military-grade invisibility, then the Romulans are going to get agitated. And supposedly the Feds don't want the Romulans agitated, for reason X.

As long as we don't know X, we can't tell whether the Treaty of Algeron still remains valid. It might be as simple as "X = Romulans already have invisible ships and can thus terminate Earth at will", meaning they will preemptively terminate Earth if it seems Starfleet is about to gain the means of returning the favor. "Will" in the MAD sense, that is: Romulus would surely die, too, if it preempted Earth that way, which is why every Romulan attempt at thwarting the UFP (ST:NEM!) has steered away from terminating Earth.

Conversely, civilian-grade invisibility is okay with the Romulans. What the Klingons had in DSC S1, and what the Romulans had in "Balance of Terror", is essentially civilian-grade even back in its day: it hampers targeting a bit, but won't hide the fact that an armada is headed your way. And the assorted duck blinds we (don't!) see can probably be thwarted by a tricorder. It's just that you can't run a phase cloak on such a mode, apparently. You'd have to install a special "Here I am!" transponder on top of the basic system, and that just wouldn't satisfy the Romulans.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Put it this way: if the Klingons had the ability to put a cloaked bird of prey in orbit of Romulus without anybody noticing, then nothing prevents them from putting a HUNDRED of them in orbit of Romulus.

Is this necessarily so?

We know that no cloak is perfect. Narratives have always made it possible to detect cloaked ships. In "Balance of Terror," it was when the Romulan ship passed through a comet. In STIII, there was some visible distortion visible to the naked eye. In STVI it was impulse exhaust. In "Redemption II," Picard set up a tachyon grid. Etc.

If there are sporadic emissions of any kind from a cloaked ship, with a hundred ships the problem would only be compounded. If there are, say, random tachyon sweeps of the area, having a hundred ships only increases the chances of one getting caught and located.

Granted, even just one ship might carry a weapon of mass destruction capable of annihilating a capital planet or rendering it uninhabitable.

In any case, it's easy to postulate that both sides exist in a state of Mutually Assured Destruction, as long as a first strike won't eliminate the ability of the other side to retaliate. I think it's probable that they must have always maintained that balance.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Is this necessarily so?

We know that no cloak is perfect. Narratives have always made it possible to detect cloaked ships. In "Balance of Terror," it was when the Romulan ship passed through a comet. In STIII, there was some visible distortion visible to the naked eye. In STVI it was impulse exhaust. In "Redemption II," Picard set up a tachyon grid. Etc.

If there are sporadic emissions of any kind from a cloaked ship...

... then using a cloaked ship to infiltrate Romulan space would be a rather dubious proposition in the first place, since every minute the Klingons spend in orbit raises the chances of their being detected. If the ship gets detected, the Romulans destroy it and probably declare war on the Klingons for violating their space.

It's just more likely, in context, that the Romulans aren't unaccustomed to seeing Klingon ships operating in Romulan space and wouldn't think there was anything particularly threatening about a bird of prey being near Romulus. To the extent that the Klingons and the Romulans seem to be engaged in a Cold War of sorts -- and the fact that Sela and her people were able to come and go from Qo'nos with relative ease -- it's more likely that the Klingons and the Romulans BOTH have ships orbiting each other's homeworlds, that both sides are tracking (or, with varrying degrees of success, trying to track) each other's surveillance vessels, and that they generally avoid actually FIRING on a lurking Klingon/Romulan ship because neither side can really afford to have their cold war go hot. So the Klingon ship in "Unificiation" was probably on and off their radar the entire time, with Romulan controllers monitoring it (as best they could) figuring it to be another Klingon surveillance bird. Not, by itself, particularly threatening, but also not particularly welcome.

Granted, even just one ship might carry a weapon of mass destruction capable of annihilating a capital planet or rendering it uninhabitable.

Sure, but again there's the fact that the Romulans have their OWN ships in orbit of Qo'nos who are in a position to retaliate in kind if the Klingons try it. So they're both sitting there with their cloaked daggers at each other's throats, wondering which of them will make the first move. In this case, the cloaking device doesn't make EITHER of them undetectable, just untargettable; more importantly, since any starship must decloak before it can fire its weapons, a cloaked ship can be considered slightly less threatening than a visible one. Should a Klingon or Romulan vessel suddenly become VISIBLE in orbit of the other's homeworld, they would probably destroy it instantly, but as long as you remain cloaked, they're just watching you (or your shadow) with their finger on trigger.

Starfleet, however, doesn't go in for this cloak and dagger bullshit. You enter Federation space in a cloaked ship, you've just volunteered for an ass whupping. If you're lucky, they'll stick a photon torpedo up your ass and watch it light up your engine room from the inside out. If you're unlucky, they'll zap you with an phase modulated tachyon pulse that causes your entire crew to hyper-evolve into Jim Hensen abominations and then mail you back to your homeworld in tiny cages.

In the weird and paranoid world of cold war politics, then, it makes sense that Picard and Data would have used a Klingon ship to infiltrate Romulus; the Romulans don't consider cloaked Klingon ships to be a threat, and IF they get caught, the Klingons can believably shrug and say "Don't look at us, we had nothing to do with that."

 

[Timo]

Nibiru is an example of the latter, and hiding the Enterprise close to the island only became necessary because of the volcano's weird magnetic field and they didn't have time to McGuyver something more clever like a holographic screen or something.

We can also always speculate on a Plan B that involved evacuating the entire village into the starship, perhaps better accomplished via boarding hatches than via transporters (for sheer maths of logistics, or then because the volcano field posed transporter problems). What we can tell for sure is that the decision to hide under water was a recent and surprising one, with Scotty still trying to come to grips with it when the heroes were already on the verge of taking off again.

Defiant's mission in the Delta Quadrant is an example of the former, with the Jem'Hadar taking the ship's presence in their space rather personally. That's not the kind of operation Starfleet would normally sanction, so it's no surprise that it backfired so spectacularly.

That the DS9 hero team was sent to perform the mission of "The Search", and not Starfleet's veteran Cloaking Recce Team Alpha, already speaks volumes. I mean, yeah, it probably was considered suicide, and Sisko was allowed to proceed in an expendable ship because sending something better would only mean greater losses - but if Starfleet did have those veterans, they'd at the very least be tagging along in that better cloakship of theirs...

Why he needed to land in San Francisco in the first place is something of a mystery. It's not like the Klingon ship didn't have transporters or something, he could have just as easily left the ship in orbit instead of sitting in the middle of Golden Gate Park for some soccer players to accidentally discover it.

But the power problems were discovered before the decision to land was made. Apparently, they landed next to the Nuclear Wessels specifically to combat the power problem, and secondarily to find out why there was whalesong at San Francisco. They did need to kill two birds with one stone when they didn't have any spare stones left...

It's just more likely that the cloaking device isn't all that useful of a device for any purpose except for ambush attacks.

Ambush attacks involve short ranges, where we have the most references to anti-cloak measures (antiproton beams, tachyon nets, visual glitches, spraying the environs with telltale dust). Surely the greatest advantage would be in long range applications, in strategic redeployments? Which is why Klingons routinely cloak even their innocent civilian liners.

The Dominion would just rudely change the definition of "range", meaning not even the transports of "Sons and Daughters" would benefit from cloaking any longer.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

We can also always speculate on a Plan B that involved evacuating the entire village into the starship

For the mission on Nibiru? That is pretty much the one thing we can conclusively rule out.

But the power problems were discovered before the decision to land was made.

Unlikely. Right before Scotty called them they were "homing in on the west coast of North America" and Uhura says the whale song is coming from "Directly ahead" meaning "San Francisco". So they were always planning to land there, even if the engines hadn't crapped out on them.

Ambush attacks involve short ranges, where we have the most references to anti-cloak measures (antiproton beams, tachyon nets, visual glitches, spraying the environs with telltale dust). Surely the greatest advantage would be in long range applications, in strategic redeployments?

No, because it's relatively easy to hide from sensors at long range, you don't even need a cloaking device half the time.

 

[Kronos]

After "Pegasus" I don't know why Starfleet didn't pursue phasing technology. Cloaks are illegal under the treaty but nothings been said about a phasing device, that would save countless lives.

After Picard decloked in front of the Romulans I'm pretty sure they would demand the treaty be revisited and that one added in.

 

[Timo]

For the mission on Nibiru? That is pretty much the one thing we can conclusively rule out.

Not really - it's grossly against the regulations, so it would certainly be the thing topmost on Kirk's mind.

I mean, what "the mission" is all about is unknown. What Kirk instead engages in is a series of impromptu plans, so rapid-paced that not even the people involved in the action (including himself) are yet aware of the details. Kirk's observed impromptu action is violently at odds with regulations; his speculative Plans B and C are likely to be that, too.

quote]Unlikely. Right before Scotty called them they were "homing in on the west coast of North America" and Uhura says the whale song is coming from "Directly ahead" meaning "San Francisco". So they were always planning to land there, even if the engines hadn't crapped out on them.[/quote]

What? They were going to where whales were to be found, but there was absolutely no indication of them desiring to land until the power problems began. So it is logical to claim that the landing (which you and I agree is somewhat odd) was dictated by the power problems, whereas Plan A would have been to grab the whales by some other, less odd means such as transporting them out of the sea.

No, because it's relatively easy to hide from sensors at long range, you don't even need a cloaking device half the time.

Apparently, you do. The DS9 heroes are always being spotted traveling in deep space and (when not capable of cloaking for reason X) have to forge their warp signature to hide their identity at long range when they cannot hide their presence at long range. But everybody in-universe agrees that Klingons cloak in deep space, meaning they think this helps with an issue.

At short ranges, cloaks are vulnerable to exposure. And nobody actually fights under cloak, not Klingons, not Romulans, not Jem'Hadar; apparently, for a reason again.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Not really - it's grossly against the regulations

It's grossly against the PLAN. Letting the natives even SEE the Enterprise was an absolute last resort and was only done to save Spock. Stopping the volcano wasn't the hard part of the plan, it was getting it done without being noticed. "Let's open the doors and put all the natives in the cargo bay!" is literally the exact opposite of "not being noticed."

What? They were going to where whales were to be found, but there was absolutely no indication of them desiring to land until the power problems began. So it is logical to claim that the landing (which you and I agree is somewhat odd) was dictated by the power problems

Only if entering the atmosphere and hovering over San Francisco in the first place was dictated by power problems. It's not like they were going to loiter over the city in a hover for three days while the crew wandered around looking for the whales.

Apparently, you do. The DS9 heroes are always being spotted traveling in deep space and (when not capable of cloaking for reason X) have to forge their warp signature to hide their identity at long range when they cannot hide their presence at long range.

Which, often enough, they can. And again there's the problem that if cloaked ships were able to reliably infiltrate Cardassian, Federation or Klingon space without being detected or tracked, everyone who DOESN'T use cloaking devices (and there's a long list of such races) would be completely screwed.

At short ranges, cloaks are vulnerable to exposure.

Which is why you don't STAY cloaked if you plan on doing any fighting. People will probably still detect you, and it's hard to stay truly hidden at close range while cloaked. But it's also hard to TARGET something that's cloaked, so you're (relatively) safe from attack until you become visible.

 

[Timo]

It's grossly against the PLAN. Letting the natives even SEE the Enterprise was an absolute last resort and was only done to save Spock. Stopping the volcano wasn't the hard part of the plan, it was getting it done without being noticed. "Let's open the doors and put all the natives in the cargo bay!" is literally the exact opposite of "not being noticed."

Which is why it sounds exactly like a Kirk Plan B that he'd never discuss with his officers in advance.

Remember that this kid is just as unwilling to lose as his more mature counterpart, just without the inhibitions.

Only if entering the atmosphere and hovering over San Francisco in the first place was dictated by power problems. It's not like they were going to loiter over the city in a hover for three days while the crew wandered around looking for the whales.

Nobody suggested going to San Francisco before the power problems arose, either to hover or to land. The natural thing would be to remain in orbit (above San Francisco if need be), until the ship failed to cater for that.

Which, often enough, they can. And again there's the problem that if cloaked ships were able to reliably infiltrate Cardassian, Federation or Klingon space without being detected or tracked, everyone who DOESN'T use cloaking devices (and there's a long list of such races) would be completely screwed.

What makes you think they aren't screwed?

People infiltrate Romulus easily enough. Nothing suggests people wouldn't be infiltrating Earth the same way.

Nobody bombards Romulus, or Earth. But cloaks have nothing to do with that, as evidenced by the asymmetry already.

So being screwed is unfortunate, but not fatal.

Which is why you don't STAY cloaked if you plan on doing any fighting. People will probably still detect you, and it's hard to stay truly hidden at close range while cloaked. But it's also hard to TARGET something that's cloaked, so you're (relatively) safe from attack until you become visible.

Exactly. It's just that, in addition, cloaks are great for use at long distances, which is why the Klingons use them that way in DS9. And the Romulans in TNG.

Timo Saloniemi