why can't we cloak?

[Anwar]

That, and the Treaty of Algeron was signed right after the Tomed Incident where thousands of people died. It was basically a choice of either agreeing to the Treaty or having to fight a bloody war with the Romulans at that point.

 

[Myasishchev]

I'm thinking it was the sacrifice the Federation had to make in face of the Klingons and Romulans agreeing not to further develop cloaking technology where a cloaked ship could fire while under its cloak. Why else would Change's ship have been the only one?

Probably because the Chang-type cloak-n-fire system, in its first combat appearance, proved easily broken and less than worthless as a tactical system. Even the Scimitar seemed at best a marginal improvement in this area.

 

[Myasishchev]

As previously mentioned, unequal treaty are more common than one might think. I beleive this specific "plot" detail is a reflection of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty prohibiting any new power from acquiring nuclear power but allowing those that already have it to keep it. It always was an actual subject, it is more than ever with last years events involving Iran and North Korea.

Indeed. Maybe what the Romulans agreed to do in exchange was not to proliferate the technology. It's probably safe to assume that the Federation in aggregate is far more powerful than the Romulans, and that the Roms, in spite of their traditional isolationism, aren't dumb enough to believe that they could take on the Feds alone. In any hot war, the Algeron treaty would go out the window, but within the cold war framework within which the Federation and Romulan conflict takes place--where each side expects the other to collapse under the weight of its own contradictions in the fullness of time--an accord could be worked out to the mutual benefit of both parties.

The Romulans have, probably, traded their cloaking technology before, in exchange for the Klingons' more advanced antimatter-powered starships, and perhaps in exchange for a supply of antimatter to run them. The Romulans could do so again--the Cardassians, Ferengi, Tholians, Sheliak, and so forth were prior to the Dominion War all independent but local threats to the Federation, but how much more trouble could the Cardassians, intermittently at war with the Federation, have caused if their ships had been cloak equipped? How about the Maquis, for that matter?

The Feds surely don't want to see the Cards and others develop cloaking devices. They've no doubt leveraged the Klingons' post-Khitomer relationship of dependence to the Federation in order to prevent the Klings from proliferating their cloaks--and at any rate the Kling cloaks are, iirc, said to be rather crap in comparison with the more advanced Romulan ones.

The Romulans likely don't really relish the notion of potential rivals getting their advanced cloaking devices, either.

Thus, the Romulans, threatening universal proliferation of cloaking devices to any anti-Federation applicant, could convince a reasonable Federation decisionmaker to agree to prohibiting widespread cloak deployment in Starfleet.

This explanation sort of satisfies an even more troubling question--we already know why the Feds don't cloak, because of the treaty. Why doesn't Enemy X use cloaks? Are they too stupid to build their own? The answer could be yes.

It doesn't answer why the Roms didn't appear to accede to the deployment of cloaking devices on Starfleet ships during the Dominion War, but 1)we don't know for sure SF didn't use them in limited applications and 2)large fleet actions seem to be a poor use for cloaks, since a bunch of them together appear to provide trackable anomalies of various sorts, especially against the Dominion's superior sensor technology, and thus undermine the purpose of the cloak in the first place. Maybe the threshold size for a cloaked warfleet is only twenty ships, as seen in the Die Is Cast, and any more ships than that operating in close formation would be discernable from background radiation/gravitation/whatever.

 

[Gary7]

I doubt that Cloaking tech would work against the Borg or 8472, as they are both more advanced than the Dominion (who can also see Cloaked ships).

This isn't just your usual cloaking technology I'm talking about. This is also the ability to move through solid objects, as the Enterprise did through that asteroid where they were trapped inside. If it could move through solid rock, it could move through the metal of a hull, and certainly through an energy field (it's not even solid). And it doesn't matter if it is seen. The torpedo will be in transit for just a second or two.

 

[Arpy]

Well, they'd turn on the cloak and only turn it off to fire - if then, thank you very much TUC. This being the case, it'd make shooting the show too difficult.

I think this is the real reason and everything else a rationalization for it. Though the "we don't sneak around" could be really great PR at meetings of the Interstellar UN..."Come on, who you gonna trust, us or those Romulans who only decloak long enough to shoot or just glare at you? Now will that be cash or check?"

 

[Phily B]

The Federation and Starfleet claim to be a peace keeping/scientific organisation, and like Picard said "Its always a game of chess with them". Its very likely they pointed out that if they are what they claim to be, then they would have no need for cloaking devices so put that condition into the treaty. Its not like the Federation couldn't mass produce a bunch of cloaking devices really easily if the Romulans ever did declare war or surprise attack.

I think it was established that the Romulan ships might've been huge, but they were not all that powerful when it came down to it - just intimidating because not many Federation ships had seen them in combat until the Dominion War.

 

[Myasishchev]

I doubt that Cloaking tech would work against the Borg or 8472, as they are both more advanced than the Dominion (who can also see Cloaked ships).

This isn't just your usual cloaking technology I'm talking about. This is also the ability to move through solid objects, as the Enterprise did through that asteroid where they were trapped inside. If it could move through solid rock, it could move through the metal of a hull, and certainly through an energy field (it's not even solid). And it doesn't matter if it is seen. The torpedo will be in transit for just a second or two.

It's essentially the same tech from The Next Phase, however. Anionic particles are shown to be very effective at making matter solid again. Bounce it off the main deflector dish and call it a day for the phase cloak.

A quick look a Mem Alpha reveals that it's actually ANYONIC radiation. So it's not the chlorine from table salt dissolved in water as I thought, then.

 

[T'Jul]

Something to do with excessive cloaking disrupting human or probably Federation species (who are mostly humanoid) atoms and causing long term side effects. The cloaking of the habitats used by Star Fleet to spy on other species not yet having warp technology probably is different and based on the bending of light to create an illusion but to cloak in space while going at warp would be real hard as there is usually no light available and would involve physics harmful. Notice that by TNG the Romulans have changed in their appearance (the men are not half as cute and the women can't seem to get their hair to grow) and the Klingons are definately less well groomed, clumpier and more ill mannered. Those are the effects of cloaking on living tissue. We humans on the other hand have remained gorgeous for the past 400 years!!

 

[Lightinspire]

Now that we are in an altered time line, why not cloak now?

 

[Islander]

Given that this alternate timeline will likely bring major impact to Romulan relations (even if the Federation set aside Nero on the fact that he is from the future, it is likely the Vulcans that originally negociated the Khitomer accord anyway...), we can think we could definitely do that.

However, I don't see that we will simply because it wouldn't bring anything to a big screen story.

 

[cwl]

didn't the Federation create mines with cloaks?

 

[Unicron]

No, they created mines with replication units when the Dominion War broke out, so that if you blew up a mine it would automatically replicate a few more to replace it. The only way to disable the minefield was to deactivate the replicator units on each individual mine, and then destroy the whole field.

 

[cwl]

yes but the mines were cloaked were they not?

 

[Islander]

yes but the mines were cloaked were they not?

The cloaking technology was loaned by the Romulan Star Empire starting with the Defiant.

 

[baxart]

Way way back in the old days... Befer there was any a' that high falootin' Next Gen stuff. Back when all we had was the TOS, a couple-three movies, the FJ Tech Manual, and the Starfleet Chronology I was running TOS era FASA/SFB campaign and we decided that the Feds didn't use cloaks because it was a power drain issue. The Klingons and Roms were willing to damn-near cripple their ships to be able to cloak, and the Feds refused to do that.
We did have Fed stealth ships that basicaly drifted through star systems in order to gain intel and run black ops.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The ENT-timeline is especially problematic: Starfleet captured a Suliban cloaking device in the very first episode of the series. As of Nu-Trek they've had an entire century to reverse engineer it and come up with their own version of it.

Even if we assume the Suliban device they captured is only powerful enough to cloak a battleball, the fact that they can also be used on larger vessels (stealth ship) provides a proof of concept and Starfleet should already have their own version at least by the start of the Earth Romulan War. Just in time, too, considering in the ENT timeline the Romulans already appear to have their own version of the cloak.

I suppose this must be Nero's fault. Parts of his ship probably arrived at Romulus in the 2130s after being sucked through that big black hole at the end of the flick.

 

[borgfan8of5]

Because we signed a treaty, and decides that because we wanted to look like the more responsible and mature we would honor the treaty that we originally signed.

 

[Anwar]

The ENT-timeline is especially problematic: Starfleet captured a Suliban cloaking device in the very first episode of the series. As of Nu-Trek they've had an entire century to reverse engineer it and come up with their own version of it.

Even if we assume the Suliban device they captured is only powerful enough to cloak a battleball, the fact that they can also be used on larger vessels (stealth ship) provides a proof of concept and Starfleet should already have their own version at least by the start of the Earth Romulan War. Just in time, too, considering in the ENT timeline the Romulans already appear to have their own version of the cloak.

I suppose this must be Nero's fault. Parts of his ship probably arrived at Romulus in the 2130s after being sucked through that big black hole at the end of the flick.

I always assumed that the Suliban cloak was supplied by Future Guy, and that Daniels or someone else from the Time War removed it from the timeline when the war ended.

 

[Praetor]

Well, I guess we pretty much know that (1) "our heroes don't sneak around" and (2) it would be too convenient for our heroes.

It's also important to bear in mind that the original reason the cloak was created for "Balance of Terror" was to created an analog for the real-world submarine, which can dive and render itself difficult, but not impossible, to detect. Submarines have specific, but limited, advantages over their surface counterparts, and their surface counterparts still have other advantages over them.

If the Treaty of Algeron is related to the Tomed Incident, it might have been a border dispute. Tomed would be an area that Vulcans had previously been to (specifically a Romulan agent disguised as a Vulcan had been there with T'Pol), so it could have been part of Federation space (but near Romulan space). Maybe the Rommies gave up their claim to the area in exchange for the Federation giving up their use of cloaks (cloaking devices at the time had a visible distortion and you could even have a torpedo track it's plasma exhaust, so it might not have been seen as a reasonable compromise).

Not that I've thought about The Treaty of Algeron at all or anything like that

I like this version.

The alternative explanation (which my biased self prefers) is that Romulan cloaks are simply better than Klingon ones. So it would make sense to get the best when dealing with a powerful unknown enemy.

I think that's likely, too. I recall speculation in the "Klingon Academy" game manual that in the reported tech exchange the Klingons gave the Romulans outdated tech schematics, so it seems likely the Romulans would have done the same.

When the Enterprise-E was introduced, word was that it was supposed to be equipped with a "stealth screen" that was a cloaking device in everything but name.

There were hopes it could be shown in a future movie.

IIRC, the only time it was used was in the comic book X-Men/ST:TNG crossover.

Wow. Thank God that was never shown. That just squeals "fanwank" to me.

Holo emitter, cloaking device, bottom line is they're sneaking around on Mintaka IV and Bak'u.

There's probably still a practical as well as juridical difference there. Much like it would be illegal to own an anti-tank cannon but not to own a revolver, the Romulans might have agreed that there's nothing wrong with the Feds having a holoscreen that can be penetrated with Fisher-Price's My First Tricorder, as long as the Feds don't field an actual cloak that fools starship sensors.

The old Romulan cloak in "Balance of Terror" probably amounted to little more than a holoscreen anyway: Spock's sensors could track the ship's movement to some accuracy despite the invisibility. (The ENT era Romulan camouflages certainly look like simple holoscreens - so even though the visual invisibility provided by them is at odds with the claims in "BoT", they aren't necessarily anachronistically advanced technology.) And the system used by Chang could have been worse than standard Klingon cloaks of the day, compromising on quality in order to allow for firing torpedoes through it - a tradeoff the Klingons were not happy with when Federation sensors got better and began tracking their ships even through standard cloaks.

That's something we see in all the spinoffs, really: the cloak of a newly encountered adversary ship type is highly efficient at first, but our heroes soon begin to see characteristic "disturbances" or "anomalies" to suggest the presence of the foe. Perhaps the Feds have simply decided not to bother when cloaks are a prohibitively expensive weapon system to develop, field and discard every five years or so.

Timo Saloniemi

I tend to agree.

I doubt that Cloaking tech would work against the Borg or 8472, as they are both more advanced than the Dominion (who can also see Cloaked ships).

Combined with the analogy to submarines/surface ships I was making earlier, it almost seems like the cloak is a lateral tactical advantage, rather than one higher on the tactical evolutionary chain. Otherwise, why wouldn't the Dominion, Borg, and 8472 all employ cloaks? Perhaps they do, but only in specialized ways - for example the Jem'Hadar's shroud ability, and those "Houdini" mines from "The Siege of AR-558."

Rom's cloaked, self-replicating mines always bothered me a bit. Surely those were not complex, power-intensive cloaks, requiring only just enough power to hide them from targeting sensors.

I always assumed that the Suliban cloak was supplied by Future Guy, and that Daniels or someone else from the Time War removed it from the timeline when the war ended.

That would probably be the safest thing to assume, as with all the TCW garbage.

 

[C.E. Evans]

FEDERATION AMBASSADOR: Unthinkable! There's no way my government will agree to abandon cloaking technology.

ROMULAN AMBASSADOR: It's only fair. Your Federation is spreading like a cancer across both the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. You're smothering us and with your continually growing size, you will present a constant threat to the Empire. This concession may be the only thing that prevents war between our peoples--the Klingons learned this the hard way after they betrayed us by signing the Khitomer Accords...



Personally, I always imagined the Treaty of Algernon to be the Romulans' response to the Khitomer Accords myself...