Trade offs

[bladela]

But they were only on the shuttle because the device was functioning in such a way as to scare the crew into mutiny. This to me is not a good sign.

I had always interpreted the mutiny as mainly in protest of the treaty violation, I must see the episode again

I suspect this idea comes from TMP. One of the fan questions about TMP is how the Epsilon IX station was able to get exterior visuals of the Klingon encounter with V'Ger. In the novels, this led to the idea that the Federation maintained a series of cloaked sensor platforms along the Klingon borders, and one happened to be in the vicinity of the encounter. Don't think it ever made it into canon, though.

I didn't know ... it would make sense

Whilst the Federation doesn't deploy cloaking devices, they do have the capability - they stole a Romulan cloak. So if anything it's a parallel situation; once the Federation had the ability, perhaps it led to the Klingons sharing their own ideas.

it could be...

Agreed. It's likely that a tricorder would see a duck blind very easily, but cloaking devices are way more difficult. I'm up for the idea that cloaking is not necessarily a single technology at all; yes, we know from Spock that the basic principle is 'bending light' around the cloaked object. But there's probably all sorts of other things you have to do in the way of emission control, suppressing gravitational effects, etc, etc. You may have to have different elements of the system to counter each of a dozen different types of scanner and sensor. The Federation could be allowed some forms of 'cloaking' like simple holographic covers, but not a full on cloaking device that does it all.

without forgetting that simply bending the light does nothing (ok ... we don't know, i hypothesize it) to the various subspace sensors that any modern ship has available

[McAvoy]

It's possible that the cloaking device is a device that not only bends the light but also is a program connected to the whole ship that controls and monitors the ship functions to keep them undetectable. To me this makes sense in that if the cloaking device malfunctions or is damaged it can be unplugged without it causing serious issues with the ship's systems.

But then again considering how easy it is to plug and play the device to even foreign alien ships, the ability to cloak itself (though it was a Ferengi DS9 episode). Who knows.

[IanKennedy]

Light is just a form of electro-magnetic radiation. A cloak that can bend that sufficiently across the entire spectrum would make an effective cloak against any sensor we have at present. Now we can't say anything about subspace issues. How it would work with emissions would be up for debate as it is bending those emissions.

[Graham Kennedy]

Light is just a form of electro-magnetic radiation. A cloak that can bend that sufficiently across the entire spectrum would make an effective cloak against any sensor we have at present. Now we can't say anything about subspace issues. How it would work with emissions would be up for debate as it is bending those emissions.

Is it, though? If light hits a mirror from one side, it reflects, but not so much from the other. Cloaks that bend light around the ship may in and of themselves do nothing to stop, say, your IR signature leaking out.

Consider that in ST VI, Chang's cloak did absolutely nothing to stop the engines leaving a trail behind the ship constantly. In DS9 the Romulan cloak was said to allow "a slight subspace variance" to radiate at warp speeds. We know that cloaks won't perfectly bend Tachyons around them, as that's how a tachyon detector grid works against them. We know that a cloak can hold a residual charge of tachyons if the ship using it blasts out a big load of them, making it visible. We know that even in TOS they were able to detect the ship's movement in spite of the cloak, just not very well.

And we know that all of this can be corrected for, making a 'perfect cloak' that the E-E couldn't see through no matter what.

It seems obvious to me that bending the light around the ship is only a small part of what's involved in cloaking. There's all sorts of other stuff you need to do to make your cloak good. And it's an arms race - you make a better cloak, the Federation makes better sensors, and so on. Which is pretty much how stealth works in the present day, actually.

[McAvoy]

For me the cloaking device is just a interesting piece of tech since it seems to be a plug and play device. You'd think there would be alot of modifications to the ship to use the cloaking device even if it's for a brief time. I mean something like what the device does, you would need to go back to the docks to heavily modify the ship.

[bladela]

Is it, though? If light hits a mirror from one side, it reflects, but not so much from the other. Cloaks that bend light around the ship may in and of themselves do nothing to stop, say, your IR signature leaking out.

Unless it bends light on the entire spectrum

Consider that in ST VI, Chang's cloak did absolutely nothing to stop the engines leaving a trail behind the ship constantly. In DS9 the Romulan cloak was said to allow "a slight subspace variance" to radiate at warp speeds. We know that cloaks won't perfectly bend Tachyons around them, as that's how a tachyon detector grid works against them. We know that a cloak can hold a residual charge of tachyons if the ship using it blasts out a big load of them, making it visible. We know that even in TOS they were able to detect the ship's movement in spite of the cloak, just not very well.
And we know that all of this can be corrected for, making a 'perfect cloak' that the E-E couldn't see through no matter what.

In theory Chang's cloak defects should affect all cloaked ship, at least at impulse speed, even the Scimitar (unless they developed new propulsion methods unknown to the Federation).

It seems obvious to me that bending the light around the ship is only a small part of what's involved in cloaking. There's all sorts of other stuff you need to do to make your cloak good. And it's an arms race - you make a better cloak, the Federation makes better sensors, and so on. Which is pretty much how stealth works in the present day, actually.

This is certain ... after Nemesis the federation suddenly found itself vulnerable to a Romulan attack, and it is conceivable that a strong impulse to develop new sensors to counteract this risk started immediately.

For me the cloaking device is just a interesting piece of tech since it seems to be a plug and play device. You'd think there would be alot of modifications to the ship to use the cloaking device even if it's for a brief time. I mean something like what the device does, you would need to go back to the docks to heavily modify the ship.

Not all changes must necessarily require dismantling the ship, rather I might think of incompatibility between technologies that could interfere with use.

[McAvoy]

Not talking about dismantling the ship or parts of it but specifically modifications to the ship that would better hide emissions, energy levels, exhaust etc. Maybe the cloaking device's field it emits is fully capable of doing this on its own. Which seems more likely in what we have seen.

Just to me, if you have a device like the cloaking device, it seems more logical to have a ship modified to make it more effective in not being detected.

[IanKennedy]

From ST VI:

SPOCK: Gas. ...Gas, Captain. Under impulse power she expends fuel like any other vessel. We call it 'plasma' but whatever the Klingon designation is, it is merely ionised gas.
UHURA: Well, what about all that equipment we're carrying to catalogue gaseous anomalies? ...Well, the thing's got to have a tail pipe.

Which is exactly how they end up detecting and destroying the BOP. Clearly the cloak didn't prevent this. Perhaps more modern ones do...

[bladela]

From ST VI:

SPOCK: Gas. ...Gas, Captain. Under impulse power she expends fuel like any other vessel. We call it 'plasma' but whatever the Klingon designation is, it is merely ionised gas.
UHURA: Well, what about all that equipment we're carrying to catalogue gaseous anomalies? ...Well, the thing's got to have a tail pipe.

Which is exactly how they end up detecting and destroying the BOP. Clearly the cloak didn't prevent this. Perhaps more modern ones do...

I have a too three-dimensional thought perhaps, but I don't see how they could do it, without expulsion of the gas there would be no propulsion...

[Coalition]

Or there needs to be a way to vent waste heat, otherwise the reactor cooks the crew and melts the ship. Subspace sensors might detect if heat was dumped into subspace, so you are stuck with realspace heat dumping.

As a result, engine efficiency is key, plus some way to store heat for a while, and dump it later. The Warbird design with lots of surface area could allow it to dump heat easier, using additional surface area to get rid of onboard heat. Good sensors to track enemy ships would be needed to avoid dumping too much heat in a direction that someone is watching.


To me, the Federation agreed to the 'don't develop cloaks' part of the treaty, letting them focus their ship designs in other areas. Nothing was said about developing better sensors, so the Federation can improve their science sensors freely, and it is 'pure coincidence' that their science sensors are very good at spotting cloaked vessels. Since Federation vessels don't have to be designed to be cloaked, they can focus their capabilities in other areas (i.e. warp travel efficiency, sensor mounting/coverage, structural strength, etc).

Romulan vessels keep their cloak ability, which is an additional compromise their hull designs have to deal with.

[McAvoy]

From ST VI:

SPOCK: Gas. ...Gas, Captain. Under impulse power she expends fuel like any other vessel. We call it 'plasma' but whatever the Klingon designation is, it is merely ionised gas.
UHURA: Well, what about all that equipment we're carrying to catalogue gaseous anomalies? ...Well, the thing's got to have a tail pipe.

Which is exactly how they end up detecting and destroying the BOP. Clearly the cloak didn't prevent this. Perhaps more modern ones do...

I have a too three-dimensional thought perhaps, but I don't see how they could do it, without expulsion of the gas there would be no propulsion...

Or its just exhaust like your car.

Coalition brings up a good point. Maybe Klingons and Romulans have to design their ships with the cloaking device in mind. Starfleet doesn't so their ships could perform better in other areas.

[bladela]

Or its just exhaust like your car.

Coalition brings up a good point. Maybe Klingons and Romulans have to design their ships with the cloaking device in mind. Starfleet doesn't so their ships could perform better in other areas.

it's very likely, surely the design of a ship is a question of balancing different requirements.
after all Starfleet could arm its ships much more, but it would go against the other requirement of exploration capacity.

[Graham Kennedy]

Whilst that's very possible, remember we do have examples where a cloaking device was installed into a ship not otherwise designed for it.

Scotty installed the stolen Romulan device on the Enterprise in The Enterprise Incident.
The Romulans installed a cloak on the Defiant in The Search.
The alternate Enterprise installed a cloak on their NX class in In A Mirror Darkly.

In each case the cloak seemed to work pretty well... although the Defiant was ultimately detected, so perhaps it didn't work as well as Sisko would have liked.

[Coalition]

Whilst that's very possible, remember we do have examples where a cloaking device was installed into a ship not otherwise designed for it.

Scotty installed the stolen Romulan device on the Enterprise in The Enterprise Incident.
The Romulans installed a cloak on the Defiant in The Search.
The alternate Enterprise installed a cloak on their NX class in In A Mirror Darkly.

In each case the cloak seemed to work pretty well... although the Defiant was ultimately detected, so perhaps it didn't work as well as Sisko would have liked.

For the Defiant cloak, it could also be a case of the Dominion using a different sensor tech (IIRC anti-proton setup, so either the Defiant kept the antiprotons away from its hull and changed the EM signature of the cloud of particles, or it let the antiprotons touch the hull, and you get small M-AM reactions that could be detected). Of course since the Dominion ships are essentially dumping antimatter into space, this could be a fairly resource-intensive search method, and searching like this is not FTL since the actual particles have to travel to the various locations (vs tachyon pulses or better subspace sensors that are FTL in nature).

As to installing the cloaking device, perhaps Federation tech is sufficiently flexible to temporarily handle the needs, but over time the equipment will fail. For example "The Enterprise Incident", was there any mention of a time frame that the cloak would work, or if there were any problems/repairs needed afterward?

[Graham Kennedy]

No, they wired it in and turned it on. It worked fine, apparently - enough that the Romulans couldn't find them as they warped back to Federation space. No mention of it not working as well or only for a short time.