Military Applications of the Duckblind

[Dingo]

I was watching Star Trek: Insurrection earlier today and wondered if the duckblind's most likely military application - covert surveillance/reconnaissance on the ground - would be a violation of the Treaty of Algeron forbidding Federation development of cloaking technology.

I'm also wondering how effective such equipment would be against known Jem'Hadar or Cardassian scanners. I'm thinking of writing a fic where the Maquis use stolen duckblinds to perform covert surveillance on Cardassian targets. Another planned fic has Starfleet sniper teams using smaller duckblinds (called the tactical duckblinds) to conceal their presence on the battlefield.

 

[Deks]

If I'm not mistaken, the 'cloaking' field was done for the most part through the use of holography ... the actual cloaking device as such was never used or mentioned to begin with.

The Federation was using this holographic masking technique in early years of TNG.
Example: Mintakans (proto Vulcans from 'Who Watches the Watchers' episode if I'm not mistaken).

Besides, the Insurrection movie takes place right after the Dominion War (probably days after peace was signed), so it's possible the Romulans couldn't really care of the Feds using cloaking tech (if they did) for a few days until matters fully stabilized.

 

[Maurice]

Seems like the Duck Blind was designed to allow observations of less technologically-advanced cultures. There's no reason to assume it isn't putting out all kinds of EM signatures that would give it away to anyone with tech above a certain level.

 

[Dingo]

However I'm sure militarily minded duckblinds would come with some sort of electronic countermeasure system to fool scanners. But I imagine higher power device means heavier gear that the scout team is going to carry into the field.

 

[Timo]

Also, installing higher-power gadgets to better hide the target (and the gadgets themselves) might create a vicious circle that leads to disaster well before a militarily acceptable Duck Blind is created. A low-power system can hide you from visual scans, but a system that hides you from radar requires so much gadgetry that it can't hide that gadgetry even from a standard radio receiver, let alone a dedicated passive radar or other listening device.

I trust that holo-images fool even relatively high-tech enemies for a limited time (as seen in VOY "Basics" or, possibly, TNG "Peak Performance"). But this time might be too short to be useful for any sort of a fixed installation or heavy vehicle, and it might be impossible to create portable versions in the 24th century yet.

I mean, if the tech did have military applications, I'm sure Romulans would have raised hell when Feds started using it in applications similar to "Who Watches the Watchers"! So it's better to accept one of the many rationalizations for why it doesn't have those applications - after which we're stuck with saying that the creation of such applications must be quite difficult.

Timo Saloniemi