In the STNG episode "The Pegasus" they revealed that the Federation had developed a cloaking device that not only hides the ship from detection, but actually phases it out of our spacetime so a ship can literally pass through solid matter.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 one example of that would be the Romulans in the episode where LaForge and Ro were thought to have died. Instead they were actually phased, along with a couple of Romulans. There was a plot hole in that episode. Those who were phased, can walk through walls as if it wasn't there but somehow, they never phased through floors and were able to walk around normally. Perhaps it was due to the ship's artificial gravity?
@@venomgeekmedia9886 i can imagine nhan solo reacting to phase cloacks: PHASE CLOACKING ISN'T LIKE DUSTING CROPS BOY, the smallest miscalculation you could end up inside an asteroid or a star and that would end your trip real fast wouldn't it?
Interestingly enough, aspects of this style of combat are not just used for submarines, but a lot of surfaces vessels, aircraft, and ground units etc. toward each other. Often in battle, the winner is the person who manages to get the first strike. Situational awareness is indeed important. After all knowledge is power. I look forward to when you "decloak" your video on the Tomed Incident and similar stealthy publications.
the basic rule of Tank Combat is to maximize first hit kill probability so when you have Tanks its kinda the same basic principle, operating like snipers.
When I requested this video I wasn’t trying to be difficult. I really was curious and have debated it in my own mind. I appreciate this video (as I didn’t envy you in doing it!) thank you Venom!! You rock! 👍😜
Sub guy here. The way you manage stealthy vessels is by giving them an area of space that belongs to them only. This gives them complete authority to move around this area without having to worry about friendly ships. If they needed to leave this area, they either need new space to be assigned to them by command, or come out of stealth while crossing space that they don't "own".
@@venomgeekmedia9886 they'd likely have very narrow corridors of space, with the entire fleet basing maneuvers off of prearranged signals and a fixed reference point. We don't do this with subs btw so I'm just theorizing at this point. They may also establish a narrow narrowband signal link between each ship before they enter cloak so they would know where the other ships are. This would be less stealthy of course, but then again a fleet is going to be way more detectable than individual ships anyways.
I would say in a hot war, on a defensive matter, defense in depth, along with a large amount of cloak detector sensor nets with defense platforms and fighter contingents at strategic targets would be a good way to start. I say that because offensively, I wouldn't imagine more than 10 or so ships grouped together, not without a massive intelligence advantage, due to the theory of defense in depth. A good commander will know how to hide their numbers, with or without cloak. The cardissians proved that time and again in their war with the Klingons. Also I like the fact that Starfleet didn't go with cloak. First it goes against their status quo; they're not the type to hide their intentions to much. Instead of using cloak to gather Intel, Starfleet makes the best sensors in the quadrant. Instead of using fear of the unknown to protect power, Starfleet uses the power of diplomacy as its primary weapon. There are quite a few advantages of not using cloak. Once again, great video!
@@JeanLucCaptain the key to that is to ensure each strong point can be supported by other mobile elements to prevent said strong points from being isolated
You might look into a youtube channel called ' Sub Brief ' It's run by an ex-USN submarine sonarman and there's a wealth of information (what's unclassified of course) about how passive sonar works (It can be *a lot* more accurate than you're assuming here, especially with modern computer processing support (let alone 23rd/24th century computer support) ) He also gets into the unclassified elements of how sub-on-sub combat works, I think you'd find it very informative in creating an analog to cloak-on-cloak combat. Personally I'd relate Romulan cloaked ships to cold-war-era US Navy Subs, which generally had a stealth and sensor advantage, and often worked solo. Klingons would be more like cold-war-era Soviet Subs, who tended to compensate for their disadvantage by working in groups (wolfpacks), having a lot less reticence about 'going active' with their sensors, and relying on greater speed and more firepower.
4:43 another tactic in detecting cloaked ships is to create tachyon bursts. It has been done for other detection methods but it works against Romulan cloaks.
In TNG both the romulans and klingons are known to operate cloaked ships in wolf packs so I am sure they have it figured out how to do so safely and without crashing into each other etc. For instance they may have preset formations and know their position in that formation or such. It also wouldn't surprise me if the Romulans and others who operate cloaked ships in close proximity also have some form of semi-active IFF (identification friend or foe) that can be switched on when in friendly territory. While a transponder broadcasts constantly, a typical IFF system only broadcasts when "pinged" by another, and there are a number of things that can be done to hide both the ping and the response like hiding it below the background noise level of a frequency using some form of spread spectrum.
It’s worth mentioning that the Treaty of Algeron prohibited us from developing new cloaking devices. It didn’t say that we couldn’t reproduce and improve on devices that we already had on hand prior to the treaty. Starfleet advanced projects was aware of this rather large loophole in the treaty and we fitted the entire Normandy class with the device we reverse engineered from the enterprise incident. The 25 percent mass increase over the defiant on which the Normandy was based was partly to accommodate the federation cloaking tech which also is designed to absorb heat for better stealth attacking. Secondly we needed to expand the size to fit a larger warp core as our device draws more power then modern units do ( again owing to us using a somewhat more primitive device). It’s been beyond beneficial during the war allowing the 1st RRTF to literally drop in on someone or to slip into a recently ended battle to rescue our escape pods or people on damaged ships. Unfortunately the Normandy class was also used as a test bed for Adm Janeway’s armor generators. We found the cloak and the armor generators don’t “ play nice” with each other so you pick one or the other. What we discovered in battle was the dominion couldn’t locate ships running our admittedly primitive cloaking tech and that with enough power it’s possible to overcome some but not all the units shortcomings. Given that we have to work with stuff that’s almost a century old I think we did an outstanding job. Signed Adm Matthew Caughey overall commander 1st RRTF deep space 9 , Bajoran front Dominion war
I find it rather annoying that when the Romulans joined the Dominion against the other Alpha quadrant powers, the treaty of Algernon was not simply voided. Cloaks are very powerful weapons and for the federation to simply not utilize them is absolutely moronic. It’d be like the U.S. completely eliminating it’s submarine fleet save for some WW2 era diesel subs while every other country gets to utilize, and develop new sub systems as much as they want.
While far from an expert, I question the use of engine venting. The trailing cloaked vessel has to be close and directly behind you. And if you are also cloaked, venting gives away your position.
Great history and breakdown of the cloaking device! You noted the difference between mid to late 24th century cloaking devices. We know that tachyon and anti proton scans can detect cloaked ships. But what of the Scimitar? We know the Federation’s tachyon scans couldn’t detect them. I wonder if the Dominions anti proton scans could?
I can imagine in Romulan and Klingon space there are very explicit traffic control measures. Each unit is assigned a specific orbit or area with that subdivided by the unit to the individual ships with orders in place if uncloaked ships are detected or other things that can pop up
A lot of what you touched on is tactics and technology used during the Cold War to track and operate submarines. The use of passive sonar versus active sonar. An active sonar pulse would give your position away and allow an enemy to snap-shot a torpedo along that line of bearing. The use of underwater sonar bouys to detect the passage of submarines. The use of noise-makers to distract torpedoes or confuse sonar operators. Your last point about the deflector pulse is good too. During the Cold War, submarines that had got behind the other sub would sometimes light up their active sonar to let the other guy know he was a target, exactly as you described it.
When I played FASA STSCS and I played romulans, I would arm torps then cloak, that would give me enough power to launch 2 torps per turn, And this was also seen in Star Trek IV. I would fire and turn hard in a random direction. This would frustrate my opponent to no end, it also made a TON of rapid writing so I could track where my ship was, and so I could prove that I was not cheating. As for cloaked vs cloaked, it would be alot like sub vs sub action, and the US Navy has made this into an artform. the old tabletop game Harpoon did an amazing job of showing how this would be done, and Tom Clancy also covered this in Red Storm Rising and Hunt for the Red October. How I look at it You would be using passive sensors ALOT, looking for stars vanishing or shifting, or the local star or other steller objects shimering or visually shifting to a cloaked ship passing between your ship and the steller object, and then there is how Kirk and crew spotted the romulan ship by it's ion trail, this would be complicated by two fleets engaging but more then likely it would be just two ships in the engagement, it would look extremely boring on the screen, two captains staring at their instruments sweating as they try to guess where the other is. Looking for the smallest hint of the other. playing it out would be ulcer inducing fun :). but both ships would slow to a crawl and constantly turn looking for the other. In Real history the German wolf pack failed alot more then succeed because subs just do not work well together, it restricts the movement of all the ships so that all the captains know where the other is at all times, without this knowledge you run the risk of ramming each other.
So you play the fossil board game Starfleet battles cool I haven't played that in a while the last time I played I was a federation tag with three battle pods on it course I was going up against a Klingon D7 and yeah let's just say I got myself handed pretty easily because I was still learning the gaming system
If I were an "Romulan" (and I'm not saying I am) I would use the designed space of the center of the Warbird for sending out "CLOAKED" decoys and have them (on my command) start to decloak in order to have federation ships distracted and or, fire some of their weapons while "decloaking" and dropping an full salvo into the troubling,..... Federation, moments later. 🏹🤠👍
@@venomgeekmedia9886 I just like the idea of self propelled cloaked decoys that would start to decloak and then recloak until recalled. In balance of Terror the bird of prey dropped an casketed (u propelled) nuke which was not cloaked......Not that I am old enough to have seen the original,...it must have been in syndication. That's my story and I'm sticking to it as an good Romulan should LoL 🏹🤠👍.
Ships that can fire while cloaked have 2 or more warp cores. The additional warp cores provide the power to compensate for the power drain that keeps a ship from being able to fire while cloaked.
Not nessesarily with more powerful warp cores you have enough power to fire under cloak. The trick is finding a way to allow the shots to pass through the cloak.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 passing through the cloaking device is a matter of frequency and harmonics. Multiple warp cores adds a redundancy that many ships lack. In case of a warp core breach you can dump the warp core and still be warp capable. This could also give you a hit and run tactici in an emergency. Fly as close as possible. Drop the damaged core. Then cloak and bug out. The damage to the opposition would be catastrophic at best case scenario. At worse the hostile would need a dock to be repaired.
Technically, visual tracking should not be possible for a cloaked ship. The visual invisibility component of the cloak involves bending light around the ship. That means the crew of the cloaked ship should not be able to just look out a window and see....well anything, really.
According to the physics I've learned mostly on YT (thanks Kyle Hill), there's only two ways to 'cloak': Either you bend radiation around you and/or project radiation patterns that exclude your profile which is basically camouflage, or you tune your EM frequencies such that you no longer interact with the surrounding universe and thus are invisible. Both are considerable challenges that need to be overcome and the technology would take a long time to perfect. I would argue that early cloaking systems used the former method and that more modern cloaks used the latter. While it might be difficult to communicate with/detect other stealth ships with camouflage type cloaks, it would be very easy to communicate by using a frequency that can only be detected by other cloaked ships. This is because your radios are operating slightly off from the principles of normal physics, and the calibration could be such that unless you're on the exact cloaking frequency with your transceiver on an exact signal type, you'd have no idea of the signal's existence. I would like to think they have some kind of proximity buffer for avoiding collisions. If your cloaking field extends out beyond your ship, you can at least tell when that field is being disrupted even if you don't know by what. This is hard to tell since a Romulan commander tested the Enterprise by getting right in the ship's nose. Maybe they calibrated the cloak to take down the proximity field or something to that effect. Hard to say. It is also noteworthy that if you're 'tuning' out of normal space, a cloak that lets you pass through matter would be the next logical step in the technological development. Edit: Cute little story: In one of my ST Aramada matches, I was playing as Romulans and my opponent turtled up. Of course, the first thing he did was put up tachy sensors so I couldn't sneak anywhere close. Funny thing was, the Shadow class has the Phase Cloak special ability. I warped the poor things into the middle of the base and triggered the most spectacular light show, all passing through the ship, so it didn't take any damage. Unfortunately, the Phase Cloak uses Special Energy which is finite, so they died. Still got my fleet into the base thanks to that distraction.
Don't think so either, they just had the best cloak there was. If you tune the ship that provides everything you need to live, you don't have to worry about seeing your environment or being unable to breathe un-tuned air. However, the ship's passive senors wouldn't work since they're tuned out as well, so that's your first hurdle to overcome. Doing this while still remaining invisible would be an understandable challenge and would explain the imperfections and why the older ones couldn't let you pass through matter. The Scimitar's cloak was 'perfect' because the plot basically said so, but by the same mechanic, you could also say they could have been detected if the Enterprise had more advanced sensors. It would be easy to say that the Scimitar happened to be leading the arms race of Sensors vs. Cloaks at the time.
My hunch would be that Romulans and Klingons, passive sensors detect tachyon radiation automatically and they can tell the different radiation frequencies between the two technologies.
I wish the federation phase cloak had been expanded upon. The idea of phasing thru solid matter is cool. Fun fact. Changs Bird of Prey that could fire cloak and track its torpedo while cloak coated the torpedos in Barillum? barillem? Barlliean? I don't remember and tuned their passive sensors to it.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 really? I wasn't aware of that the klingons and Romulans did. Was that before or after the Enterprise D crew turn in that lost excelsior class that was lock inside that asteroid?
Three things 1. The klingons didn't have cloaking tech until the disco era. 2. Let's not forget the Suliban had cloaking devices. 3. It makes sense that the Breen had some type of cloak which would explain how they were able to hit Earth.
yep, although im not sure what kind of cloaks they had in DISCO i feel like they were more some kind of sensor screen. they wouldn't obtain cloaking tech until the late 2260s. well remembered with the Suliban, and again that is a cloak they have the chance to experiment with.
Well you kind of touched on this, but there is the IFF Identify Friend or Foe. Quite possibly Klingonnand Romulan ships don't fly around crashing into one another is that there is a passive communication between ships saying 'hey I'm right here! Don't shoot me! Don't crash into me!'.
@@Palmerrip Modern IFF systems are a constant or semi-constant signal emitting broadcast system. Tracking a cloaked ship at that point is as simple as having a partner ship with scanners looking for stray signals and cross-referencing an approximate location via triangulation. Simple terms, not viable because if your allies can see that IFF because you HAVE to be broadcasting it openly since comms don't generally have a 'to whom it is addressed' when in reality a broadcast is addressed 'to all in range'. It is one reason why if you have two or three radio receivers available, you can track a radio signal's point of origin fairly accurately even if the receivers are placed in a single area.
I imagine ship Transponders would be of key use in both Combat and none combat zones. As long as said transponders have an On/Off switch, this would give formations the ability to coordinate.
A question ive always had is Why dont the Romulans use drones and automated fighting vehicles? They have the technology as early as the 2200s and it would complement thier societal issues, biological short comings, and military doctorine.
The original question, about how cloaked ships avoid colliding with each other, gave me pause to think about a couple of considerations. 1) Space is really big. The odds are slim for a collision. 2) In the case when the ships are in relatively close proximity to one another, such as the Klingons around Q’nos or the Romulans around Romulus, why would they have their cloaks engaged in a friendly harbor? Even in defending their home-worlds from an assault by unfriendlies, one would not be engaged in a perpetual state of silent running. The concern is not colliding with another cloaked ship, but rather taking friendly fire because your cloaked ship is in close proximity to an alien vessel and another friendly fires on and misses the unfriendly but hits your cloaked and therefore unshielded vessel. Game over. Like I stated in (1), space is big, but in the relatively close quarters environment of defending against a home-world assault with dozens of ships on each side firing at each other, running with an active cloak will provide a negligible tactical advantage; running with deflector shields down for any reason is just stupid.
@@philiptai2675 Those may have been holographic suits in the vein of active camouflage. The only reason I am saying that the suits from Insurrection may have been holographic technology instead of a true cloak is the fact that after the 'Duck Blind' observation post lost its own holographic projection, the suits followed suit which suggests a direct connection of some sort. Jem' Hedar cloak tech is a very different story, as the Dominion may have access to sources of technology in the Gamma Quadrant that even the Romulans or Federation can't match when it comes down to it, likely due to power requirements and weight because Jem' Hedar are stronger obviously, but you don't see much in the way of extra bulk on the armor the cloak equipped Jem' Hedar have which suggests a massive tech gap in terms of generations and not improvement.
Oh i remember in futer imperfect data informed admiral tomaloc how federation sensors can detect romulan clocking devices, and after the dominion war star fleet will have gained the dominion method of cload detection. The poleron beam , ( already) but the single ship long range tacyion method the jemhadar had developed by season 7 . Not to mention any other dominion technology. In dominion hq . Also somehow star base 24 the key installation on the nuetral zone is a secret location. King of wondered how thats possible. Before the tacyon detection system was developed you would imagine the romulans had scouted the federation side and its key world and shipyards. Unless the base was somhow cloaked ? Perhaps the treaty was specifically for starships as we see the federation using them in studying pre warp civilisations. ? Or person stealth suits .
Actually the Klingons had a Bird of Prey that could fire while cloaked in the movie "The Undiscovered Country" Its how they blamed the Federation for killing Chancellor Gorkon by firing the torpedoes while cloaked from directly underneath the Enterprise making it appear as though the Enterprise had fired.
it was the definition of uber ship (that OP stated) the same as scimitar - ship kinda contradicting the state of technology (as in voyager we could see two races fighting - shooting and having shields while cloaked). Also that B'rel could be easy taken care of by a guided torp, as that torp was leaving trail from the ship. In scimitar case that wasnt so as it probably had shields on while cloaked.
To add few things The more cloacked ships - the easier to find they are. Also the antiproton scan either wasnt used in Nemesis (or Enterprise E didnt had it) or Romulans managed to compleatly negate it (as neither Valdor's or Scimitar could be detected for Picard and crew). I'm not shure but probably ships cant be cloacked forever, long day periods yes but not forever (just like you can hold shields for few hours max). So the fights would be engaged by the side who doesnt have to decloak, or had a need to force and angage (and just decloak's).
@@venomgeekmedia9886 well perfect for its time :D, vs future trek it wont be perfect. But Enterprise couldnt detect valdors also in that movie. So it could also be that antiproton on fed side isnt as good as Dominions.
Rewatching. I noticed a mistake in the undiscovered country. Excelsior had equipment for tracking gasus anomalies. Not enterprise, uhura suggests enterprise use the equipment nit excelsior. ( writing continually issue probably)
@@venomgeekmedia9886 true but for ships of the same fleet. The Klingons were able to communicate with home under cloak ( unification) a system allowing them to work in squadrons would be necessary, a proximal alarm. That only eash other can read would be necessary. Like martoks raiding party or the fleet at ds9 in way of the warrior . Just to avoid collisions ?
Yeah I kind of bummed out that the federation won't use cloaking devices or face facing devices on there but you know it's what's your saying is kind of similar to that I don't have any experience on someone sub combat but I pretty sure it's similar to that
@@venomgeekmedia9886 They do but they don't? Romulans and Klingons do, for most ships. The Federation does not for the most part, but they do have passive stealth systems such as a 'cold' thruster system, I can't remember if that was STO or something I read somewhere else. Basically it's supposed to be a low temperature thruster or low waste heat impulse drive, hopefully lowering thermal profiles which when other systems are applied it 'should' make a ship harder to detect, I do remember that's what the Stealth rating was on ship stat screens.
Yeah, and they are deployed all along the neutral zone in tng. But it raises the question how long had the romulans been able to penetrate federation defenses before they invented the tachyon grid.
Yeah while transponders will only identify you to your friends. Everyone can pick up on the signal and so know that there is a ship present which would compromise your cloak.
Breen definitely, no other wat they could get that to earth and surprise the federation. I believe the federation used claoking devices, and used them at tomed it explains the treaty they signed.
If Trek was a more reasonable universe its systems would have centralized traffic control like modern air traffic control systems. No random starship should be able to just fly to a major world. The Trek idea that systems are nearly empty of development is silly. Sensors should warn systems control of an approaching starship and they are contacted and ordered into a shipping channel to reduce collisions and smuggling. The cloak powers likely don’t allow their use while in friendly inhabited systems . No one wants their shipyard struck by a hotshot bird of prey
Where does this idiotic notion come from that active sensors are worth anything in space battles? If your ship and my ship are a light minute apart and you are trying to detect me with active sensors while I rely on passives then I will see you a full minute before you see me. Passive is where its at.
But none of this makes sense. If a cloak pushes electromagnetic radiation away from a ship to make it undetectable, how could a ship ever see anything since most things in the universe give out electromagnetic radiation? It would be like flying blind because the ship would not be able to see any form of electromagnetic radiation under cloak. You could say a ship could use gravitational waves as sensors but that is a problem too since gravitational waves travel at the speed of light. Star ships in Star Trek travel many times the space of light. They run into a gravitational field of a planet long before the the ship could sense it and change course to avoid the planet. Now add in the ship is traveling under cloak...
Why not use a form of active sensor buoy that is cloaked at first and then starts pinging. Since you have multiple sensonst on your relatively long space ship, you can pretty accurately determine the place of a pinged object. You only need to solve the problem, that your own cloak would be pinged as well, but that could be overcome with only pinging in a certain direction. Also add an active ping to your torpedoes, so they can detect cloaked ships when they come close.
In the STNG episode "The Pegasus" they revealed that the Federation had developed a cloaking device that not only hides the ship from detection, but actually phases it out of our spacetime so a ship can literally pass through solid matter.
Yep in fact all three of the major powers have experimented with phase cloaks.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 one example of that would be the Romulans in the episode where LaForge and Ro were thought to have died. Instead they were actually phased, along with a couple of Romulans.
There was a plot hole in that episode. Those who were phased, can walk through walls as if it wasn't there but somehow, they never phased through floors and were able to walk around normally. Perhaps it was due to the ship's artificial gravity?
@@shawn092182 that was my head cannon excuse for it
@@venomgeekmedia9886 i can imagine nhan solo reacting to phase cloacks: PHASE CLOACKING ISN'T LIKE DUSTING CROPS BOY, the smallest miscalculation you could end up inside an asteroid or a star and that would end your trip real fast wouldn't it?
Interestingly enough, aspects of this style of combat are not just used for submarines, but a lot of surfaces vessels, aircraft, and ground units etc. toward each other. Often in battle, the winner is the person who manages to get the first strike.
Situational awareness is indeed important. After all knowledge is power.
I look forward to when you "decloak" your video on the Tomed Incident and similar stealthy publications.
yeah its going to be an interesting period to cover
the basic rule of Tank Combat is to maximize first hit kill probability so when you have Tanks its kinda the same basic principle, operating like snipers.
When I requested this video I wasn’t trying to be difficult. I really was curious and have debated it in my own mind. I appreciate this video (as I didn’t envy you in doing it!) thank you Venom!! You rock! 👍😜
Glad you enjoyed it.
Sub guy here. The way you manage stealthy vessels is by giving them an area of space that belongs to them only. This gives them complete authority to move around this area without having to worry about friendly ships. If they needed to leave this area, they either need new space to be assigned to them by command, or come out of stealth while crossing space that they don't "own".
ok thanks, and i presume its the same principle in hostile as well as friendly waters.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 yes, that way you know ANY submerged, or cloaked in this case, contact is automatically a hostile.
@@mdsx01 ok what if there's a whole fleet of cloaked ships?
@@venomgeekmedia9886 they'd likely have very narrow corridors of space, with the entire fleet basing maneuvers off of prearranged signals and a fixed reference point. We don't do this with subs btw so I'm just theorizing at this point. They may also establish a narrow narrowband signal link between each ship before they enter cloak so they would know where the other ships are. This would be less stealthy of course, but then again a fleet is going to be way more detectable than individual ships anyways.
A lot of nuance here that we never really get to see in the shows (eg: the warbird that Councilor Troy was on). Great job.
He’s amazing
That was a great episode a shame they didn't have the budget to do it justice.
I would say in a hot war, on a defensive matter, defense in depth, along with a large amount of cloak detector sensor nets with defense platforms and fighter contingents at strategic targets would be a good way to start. I say that because offensively, I wouldn't imagine more than 10 or so ships grouped together, not without a massive intelligence advantage, due to the theory of defense in depth. A good commander will know how to hide their numbers, with or without cloak. The cardissians proved that time and again in their war with the Klingons.
Also I like the fact that Starfleet didn't go with cloak. First it goes against their status quo; they're not the type to hide their intentions to much. Instead of using cloak to gather Intel, Starfleet makes the best sensors in the quadrant. Instead of using fear of the unknown to protect power, Starfleet uses the power of diplomacy as its primary weapon. There are quite a few advantages of not using cloak.
Once again, great video!
how to break the Dominion Blitkrieg? Do what the Soviets did at Kursk, LAYERS OF DEFENCE designed to rob the momentum from the enemy attack.
@@JeanLucCaptain the key to that is to ensure each strong point can be supported by other mobile elements to prevent said strong points from being isolated
You might look into a youtube channel called ' Sub Brief ' It's run by an ex-USN submarine sonarman and there's a wealth of information (what's unclassified of course) about how passive sonar works (It can be *a lot* more accurate than you're assuming here, especially with modern computer processing support (let alone 23rd/24th century computer support) )
He also gets into the unclassified elements of how sub-on-sub combat works, I think you'd find it very informative in creating an analog to cloak-on-cloak combat.
Personally I'd relate Romulan cloaked ships to cold-war-era US Navy Subs, which generally had a stealth and sensor advantage, and often worked solo. Klingons would be more like cold-war-era Soviet Subs, who tended to compensate for their disadvantage by working in groups (wolfpacks), having a lot less reticence about 'going active' with their sensors, and relying on greater speed and more firepower.
Thanks I'll check it out.
I like the sounds that Klingon & Romulan ships make when they cloak & decloak & the USS Defiant aswell
4:43 another tactic in detecting cloaked ships is to create tachyon bursts. It has been done for other detection methods but it works against Romulan cloaks.
In TNG both the romulans and klingons are known to operate cloaked ships in wolf packs so I am sure they have it figured out how to do so safely and without crashing into each other etc. For instance they may have preset formations and know their position in that formation or such. It also wouldn't surprise me if the Romulans and others who operate cloaked ships in close proximity also have some form of semi-active IFF (identification friend or foe) that can be switched on when in friendly territory. While a transponder broadcasts constantly, a typical IFF system only broadcasts when "pinged" by another, and there are a number of things that can be done to hide both the ping and the response like hiding it below the background noise level of a frequency using some form of spread spectrum.
Yeah you definitely couldn't have an active transponder. A pinged transponder would be better but could still be exploited.
I would love an episode of Star Trek that is basically the Hunt for Red October.
It’s worth mentioning that the Treaty of Algeron prohibited us from developing new cloaking devices. It didn’t say that we couldn’t reproduce and improve on devices that we already had on hand prior to the treaty. Starfleet advanced projects was aware of this rather large loophole in the treaty and we fitted the entire Normandy class with the device we reverse engineered from the enterprise incident. The 25 percent mass increase over the defiant on which the Normandy was based was partly to accommodate the federation cloaking tech which also is designed to absorb heat for better stealth attacking. Secondly we needed to expand the size to fit a larger warp core as our device draws more power then modern units do ( again owing to us using a somewhat more primitive device). It’s been beyond beneficial during the war allowing the 1st RRTF to literally drop in on someone or to slip into a recently ended battle to rescue our escape pods or people on damaged ships. Unfortunately the Normandy class was also used as a test bed for Adm Janeway’s armor generators. We found the cloak and the armor generators don’t “ play nice” with each other so you pick one or the other. What we discovered in battle was the dominion couldn’t locate ships running our admittedly primitive cloaking tech and that with enough power it’s possible to overcome some but not all the units shortcomings. Given that we have to work with stuff that’s almost a century old I think we did an outstanding job. Signed Adm Matthew Caughey overall commander 1st RRTF deep space 9 , Bajoran front Dominion war
I find it rather annoying that when the Romulans joined the Dominion against the other Alpha quadrant powers, the treaty of Algernon was not simply voided. Cloaks are very powerful weapons and for the federation to simply not utilize them is absolutely moronic. It’d be like the U.S. completely eliminating it’s submarine fleet save for some WW2 era diesel subs while every other country gets to utilize, and develop new sub systems as much as they want.
Is it worth mentioning that none of Above happened and your talking rot
Get a life
While far from an expert, I question the use of engine venting. The trailing cloaked vessel has to be close and directly behind you. And if you are also cloaked, venting gives away your position.
It does. But if he's directly behind you he probably knows you're there. Venting gives you the chance to pull a reversal and get the jump on him.
Great history and breakdown of the cloaking device! You noted the difference between mid to late 24th century cloaking devices. We know that tachyon and anti proton scans can detect cloaked ships. But what of the Scimitar? We know the Federation’s tachyon scans couldn’t detect them. I wonder if the Dominions anti proton scans could?
I can imagine in Romulan and Klingon space there are very explicit traffic control measures. Each unit is assigned a specific orbit or area with that subdivided by the unit to the individual ships with orders in place if uncloaked ships are detected or other things that can pop up
I can imagine the romulans doing that. But I don't think the klingons would keep to that very well.
A lot of what you touched on is tactics and technology used during the Cold War to track and operate submarines. The use of passive sonar versus active sonar. An active sonar pulse would give your position away and allow an enemy to snap-shot a torpedo along that line of bearing. The use of underwater sonar bouys to detect the passage of submarines. The use of noise-makers to distract torpedoes or confuse sonar operators. Your last point about the deflector pulse is good too. During the Cold War, submarines that had got behind the other sub would sometimes light up their active sonar to let the other guy know he was a target, exactly as you described it.
Yeah gotta admit. Most of my knowledge came from "the hunt for red october"
When I played FASA STSCS and I played romulans, I would arm torps then cloak, that would give me enough power to launch 2 torps per turn, And this was also seen in Star Trek IV. I would fire and turn hard in a random direction. This would frustrate my opponent to no end, it also made a TON of rapid writing so I could track where my ship was, and so I could prove that I was not cheating.
As for cloaked vs cloaked, it would be alot like sub vs sub action, and the US Navy has made this into an artform. the old tabletop game Harpoon did an amazing job of showing how this would be done, and Tom Clancy also covered this in Red Storm Rising and Hunt for the Red October.
How I look at it You would be using passive sensors ALOT, looking for stars vanishing or shifting, or the local star or other steller objects shimering or visually shifting to a cloaked ship passing between your ship and the steller object, and then there is how Kirk and crew spotted the romulan ship by it's ion trail, this would be complicated by two fleets engaging but more then likely it would be just two ships in the engagement, it would look extremely boring on the screen, two captains staring at their instruments sweating as they try to guess where the other is. Looking for the smallest hint of the other. playing it out would be ulcer inducing fun :). but both ships would slow to a crawl and constantly turn looking for the other.
In Real history the German wolf pack failed alot more then succeed because subs just do not work well together, it restricts the movement of all the ships so that all the captains know where the other is at all times, without this knowledge you run the risk of ramming each other.
So you play the fossil board game Starfleet battles cool I haven't played that in a while the last time I played I was a federation tag with three battle pods on it course I was going up against a Klingon D7 and yeah let's just say I got myself handed pretty easily because I was still learning the gaming system
I like the Oberth Jester variants at 10:44
Yeah the fighting oberths of the 23rd century.
If I were an "Romulan" (and I'm not saying I am) I would use the designed space of the center of the Warbird for sending out "CLOAKED" decoys and have them (on my command) start to decloak in order to have federation ships distracted and or, fire some of their weapons while "decloaking" and dropping an full salvo into the troubling,..... Federation, moments later. 🏹🤠👍
Yeah that's certainly a tactic. The romulan commander does something similar in balance of terror.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 I just like the idea of self propelled cloaked decoys that would start to decloak and then recloak until recalled. In balance of Terror the bird of prey dropped an casketed (u propelled) nuke which was not cloaked......Not that I am old enough to have seen the original,...it must have been in syndication. That's my story and I'm sticking to it as an good Romulan should LoL 🏹🤠👍.
Ships that can fire while cloaked have 2 or more warp cores. The additional warp cores provide the power to compensate for the power drain that keeps a ship from being able to fire while cloaked.
Not nessesarily with more powerful warp cores you have enough power to fire under cloak. The trick is finding a way to allow the shots to pass through the cloak.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 passing through the cloaking device is a matter of frequency and harmonics. Multiple warp cores adds a redundancy that many ships lack. In case of a warp core breach you can dump the warp core and still be warp capable. This could also give you a hit and run tactici in an emergency. Fly as close as possible. Drop the damaged core. Then cloak and bug out. The damage to the opposition would be catastrophic at best case scenario. At worse the hostile would need a dock to be repaired.
Technically, visual tracking should not be possible for a cloaked ship. The visual invisibility component of the cloak involves bending light around the ship. That means the crew of the cloaked ship should not be able to just look out a window and see....well anything, really.
Good point. I imagine you would see something, but probably heavily distorted.
According to the physics I've learned mostly on YT (thanks Kyle Hill), there's only two ways to 'cloak': Either you bend radiation around you and/or project radiation patterns that exclude your profile which is basically camouflage, or you tune your EM frequencies such that you no longer interact with the surrounding universe and thus are invisible. Both are considerable challenges that need to be overcome and the technology would take a long time to perfect.
I would argue that early cloaking systems used the former method and that more modern cloaks used the latter. While it might be difficult to communicate with/detect other stealth ships with camouflage type cloaks, it would be very easy to communicate by using a frequency that can only be detected by other cloaked ships. This is because your radios are operating slightly off from the principles of normal physics, and the calibration could be such that unless you're on the exact cloaking frequency with your transceiver on an exact signal type, you'd have no idea of the signal's existence.
I would like to think they have some kind of proximity buffer for avoiding collisions. If your cloaking field extends out beyond your ship, you can at least tell when that field is being disrupted even if you don't know by what. This is hard to tell since a Romulan commander tested the Enterprise by getting right in the ship's nose. Maybe they calibrated the cloak to take down the proximity field or something to that effect. Hard to say.
It is also noteworthy that if you're 'tuning' out of normal space, a cloak that lets you pass through matter would be the next logical step in the technological development.
Edit: Cute little story: In one of my ST Aramada matches, I was playing as Romulans and my opponent turtled up. Of course, the first thing he did was put up tachy sensors so I couldn't sneak anywhere close. Funny thing was, the Shadow class has the Phase Cloak special ability. I warped the poor things into the middle of the base and triggered the most spectacular light show, all passing through the ship, so it didn't take any damage. Unfortunately, the Phase Cloak uses Special Energy which is finite, so they died. Still got my fleet into the base thanks to that distraction.
Yeah well the 2nd one is basically a phase cloak which everyone was experimenting with. Still a way off though. I don't think the scimitar used that.
Don't think so either, they just had the best cloak there was. If you tune the ship that provides everything you need to live, you don't have to worry about seeing your environment or being unable to breathe un-tuned air. However, the ship's passive senors wouldn't work since they're tuned out as well, so that's your first hurdle to overcome. Doing this while still remaining invisible would be an understandable challenge and would explain the imperfections and why the older ones couldn't let you pass through matter.
The Scimitar's cloak was 'perfect' because the plot basically said so, but by the same mechanic, you could also say they could have been detected if the Enterprise had more advanced sensors. It would be easy to say that the Scimitar happened to be leading the arms race of Sensors vs. Cloaks at the time.
The gas detection strat should be dubbed "the Crop Dust maneuver"
This was a very good video and well thought out.
My hunch would be that Romulans and Klingons, passive sensors detect tachyon radiation automatically and they can tell the different radiation frequencies between the two technologies.
I wish the federation phase cloak had been expanded upon. The idea of phasing thru solid matter is cool. Fun fact. Changs Bird of Prey that could fire cloak and track its torpedo while cloak coated the torpedos in Barillum? barillem? Barlliean? I don't remember and tuned their passive sensors to it.
well interestingly enough all three powers had experimented with phase cloaks.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 really? I wasn't aware of that the klingons and Romulans did. Was that before or after the Enterprise D crew turn in that lost excelsior class that was lock inside that asteroid?
@@warhawk4494 worf mentions it. and the romulans were using one in "the next phase"
@@venomgeekmedia9886 I'll have to go back and rewatch TNG. It's been years since I have. Thank you for the heads up
@@warhawk4494 the episode where Geordie and Roe "died" in transporter accident
Three things
1. The klingons didn't have cloaking tech until the disco era.
2. Let's not forget the Suliban had cloaking devices.
3. It makes sense that the Breen had some type of cloak which would explain how they were able to hit Earth.
yep, although im not sure what kind of cloaks they had in DISCO i feel like they were more some kind of sensor screen. they wouldn't obtain cloaking tech until the late 2260s.
well remembered with the Suliban, and again that is a cloak they have the chance to experiment with.
Cheers. Great idea for a series
you can fire dust/sand into a an area and collisions will illuminate the cloaked ship
Well you kind of touched on this, but there is the IFF Identify Friend or Foe. Quite possibly Klingonnand Romulan ships don't fly around crashing into one another is that there is a passive communication between ships saying 'hey I'm right here! Don't shoot me! Don't crash into me!'.
Trouble is that active IFF markers would still compromise your cloak, since your emitting a signal that can be detected.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 IFF's are a passive system.
@@Palmerrip Modern IFF systems are a constant or semi-constant signal emitting broadcast system. Tracking a cloaked ship at that point is as simple as having a partner ship with scanners looking for stray signals and cross-referencing an approximate location via triangulation.
Simple terms, not viable because if your allies can see that IFF because you HAVE to be broadcasting it openly since comms don't generally have a 'to whom it is addressed' when in reality a broadcast is addressed 'to all in range'. It is one reason why if you have two or three radio receivers available, you can track a radio signal's point of origin fairly accurately even if the receivers are placed in a single area.
How do phasers develop once they’re invented? Turrets, strips, type 7, type 10, type 12/13?
I imagine ship Transponders would be of key use in both Combat and none combat zones. As long as said transponders have an On/Off switch, this would give formations the ability to coordinate.
Yes. But you better be damn sure where the combat zone is otherwise you might give yourself away.
A question ive always had is Why dont the Romulans use drones and automated fighting vehicles?
They have the technology as early as the 2200s and it would complement thier societal issues, biological short comings, and military doctorine.
I guess drones were more effort than they were worth. Although in some comics we see them used for reconnaissance in the 24th century.
A wasted resource in my opinion.
good information
4:02 Shinzon would like to know your location :P
The original question, about how cloaked ships avoid colliding with each other, gave me pause to think about a couple of considerations.
1) Space is really big. The odds are slim for a collision.
2) In the case when the ships are in relatively close proximity to one another, such as the Klingons around Q’nos or the Romulans around Romulus, why would they have their cloaks engaged in a friendly harbor? Even in defending their home-worlds from an assault by unfriendlies, one would not be engaged in a perpetual state of silent running. The concern is not colliding with another cloaked ship, but rather taking friendly fire because your cloaked ship is in close proximity to an alien vessel and another friendly fires on and misses the unfriendly but hits your cloaked and therefore unshielded vessel. Game over.
Like I stated in (1), space is big, but in the relatively close quarters environment of defending against a home-world assault with dozens of ships on each side firing at each other, running with an active cloak will provide a negligible tactical advantage; running with deflector shields down for any reason is just stupid.
How about personal cloaking devices? The Jem Hadar as well as the Federation use them regularly.
Interesting. There's no equipment specifically mentioned for that. Some have suggested it's biological.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 how about in insurrection when data and the rest of the science nerds were creeping on those poor villagers
@@philiptai2675 Those may have been holographic suits in the vein of active camouflage. The only reason I am saying that the suits from Insurrection may have been holographic technology instead of a true cloak is the fact that after the 'Duck Blind' observation post lost its own holographic projection, the suits followed suit which suggests a direct connection of some sort.
Jem' Hedar cloak tech is a very different story, as the Dominion may have access to sources of technology in the Gamma Quadrant that even the Romulans or Federation can't match when it comes down to it, likely due to power requirements and weight because Jem' Hedar are stronger obviously, but you don't see much in the way of extra bulk on the armor the cloak equipped Jem' Hedar have which suggests a massive tech gap in terms of generations and not improvement.
Oh i remember in futer imperfect data informed admiral tomaloc how federation sensors can detect romulan clocking devices, and after the dominion war star fleet will have gained the dominion method of cload detection. The poleron beam , ( already) but the single ship long range tacyion method the jemhadar had developed by season 7 . Not to mention any other dominion technology. In dominion hq . Also somehow star base 24 the key installation on the nuetral zone is a secret location. King of wondered how thats possible. Before the tacyon detection system was developed you would imagine the romulans had scouted the federation side and its key world and shipyards. Unless the base was somhow cloaked ? Perhaps the treaty was specifically for starships as we see the federation using them in studying pre warp civilisations. ? Or person stealth suits .
Actually the Klingons had a Bird of Prey that could fire while cloaked in the movie "The Undiscovered Country" Its how they blamed the Federation for killing Chancellor Gorkon by firing the torpedoes while cloaked from directly underneath the Enterprise making it appear as though the Enterprise had fired.
Yep but that was a rare prototype and we don't see it again until nemesis.
it was the definition of uber ship (that OP stated) the same as scimitar - ship kinda contradicting the state of technology (as in voyager we could see two races fighting - shooting and having shields while cloaked). Also that B'rel could be easy taken care of by a guided torp, as that torp was leaving trail from the ship. In scimitar case that wasnt so as it probably had shields on while cloaked.
I enjoy this video a lot .
To add few things
The more cloacked ships - the easier to find they are.
Also the antiproton scan either wasnt used in Nemesis (or Enterprise E didnt had it) or Romulans managed to compleatly negate it (as neither Valdor's or Scimitar could be detected for Picard and crew).
I'm not shure but probably ships cant be cloacked forever, long day periods yes but not forever (just like you can hold shields for few hours max). So the fights would be engaged by the side who doesnt have to decloak, or had a need to force and angage (and just decloak's).
They say the the Scimitars cloak is perfect so none of the normal detection methods work.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 well perfect for its time :D, vs future trek it wont be perfect. But Enterprise couldnt detect valdors also in that movie. So it could also be that antiproton on fed side isnt as good as Dominions.
@@T0ffik1 yeah i do agree its probably a dominion technology, which the others reverse engineered.
How Data used a modified torpedo on a cloaked Warbird comes to mind as one example.
Yeah wide dispersal, like a depth charge.
Rewatching. I noticed a mistake in the undiscovered country. Excelsior had equipment for tracking gasus anomalies. Not enterprise, uhura suggests enterprise use the equipment nit excelsior. ( writing continually issue probably)
Yeah I suspect in an earlier draft sulu would rescue kirk. But that split the crew up so enterprise did instead.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 agreed
A anti proton beam would react with a cloaked ship illuminating it?
Figuratively nor literally but yes. Antiprotons stick to cloaks and show up very easily on sensors.
battlespace: Kriosian front?
I will make a follow up video explaining what I plan to do with that.
Iff ? They have the ability to communicate under cloak so friend or fow systems would be possible ( essential)
Trouble with any active IFF system is that it can be used by friend and foe alike.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 true but for ships of the same fleet. The Klingons were able to communicate with home under cloak ( unification) a system allowing them to work in squadrons would be necessary, a proximal alarm. That only eash other can read would be necessary. Like martoks raiding party or the fleet at ds9 in way of the warrior . Just to avoid collisions ?
Yeah I kind of bummed out that the federation won't use cloaking devices or face facing devices on there but you know it's what's your saying is kind of similar to that I don't have any experience on someone sub combat but I pretty sure it's similar to that
I mean I think they use cloaks in STO after the fall of romulus
@@venomgeekmedia9886 They do but they don't? Romulans and Klingons do, for most ships. The Federation does not for the most part, but they do have passive stealth systems such as a 'cold' thruster system, I can't remember if that was STO or something I read somewhere else. Basically it's supposed to be a low temperature thruster or low waste heat impulse drive, hopefully lowering thermal profiles which when other systems are applied it 'should' make a ship harder to detect, I do remember that's what the Stealth rating was on ship stat screens.
@@Jon-ef4hh ok. thats also interesting as thats an example of "Soft Stealth" making something stealthy without relying on typical stealth materials
Magnetic Anomaly Detector
The Enterprise Incident was in November 2268
yep 43 years before the treaty of algeron.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 you said otherwise without realizing it
I always thought the taciyon detection grid was like the real world submarine soso warning net . ( sonar detection grid )
Yeah, and they are deployed all along the neutral zone in tng. But it raises the question how long had the romulans been able to penetrate federation defenses before they invented the tachyon grid.
@@venomgeekmedia9886 yes years i assume
Allied ships know where each other are because of their transponder codes, it is how they found the Phoenix.
Yeah while transponders will only identify you to your friends. Everyone can pick up on the signal and so know that there is a ship present which would compromise your cloak.
Breen definitely, no other wat they could get that to earth and surprise the federation. I believe the federation used claoking devices, and used them at tomed it explains the treaty they signed.
My thoughts precisely
If Trek was a more reasonable universe its systems would have centralized traffic control like modern air traffic control systems. No random starship should be able to just fly to a major world. The Trek idea that systems are nearly empty of development is silly. Sensors should warn systems control of an approaching starship and they are contacted and ordered into a shipping channel to reduce collisions and smuggling. The cloak powers likely don’t allow their use while in friendly inhabited systems . No one wants their shipyard struck by a hotshot bird of prey
Oh yeah developed systems would have all sorts of sensor arrays, telescopes and defense grids.
Refer to Wrath of Khan
Where does this idiotic notion come from that active sensors are worth anything in space battles?
If your ship and my ship are a light minute apart and you are trying to detect me with active sensors while I rely on passives then I will see you a full minute before you see me.
Passive is where its at.
But none of this makes sense.
If a cloak pushes electromagnetic radiation away from a ship to make it undetectable, how could a ship ever see anything since most things in the universe give out electromagnetic radiation? It would be like flying blind because the ship would not be able to see any form of electromagnetic radiation under cloak.
You could say a ship could use gravitational waves as sensors but that is a problem too since gravitational waves travel at the speed of light. Star ships in Star Trek travel many times the space of light. They run into a gravitational field of a planet long before the the ship could sense it and change course to avoid the planet.
Now add in the ship is traveling under cloak...
Yeah you'd probably say subspace sensors. Otherwise navigating under cloak would be impossible.
First!
Why not use a form of active sensor buoy that is cloaked at first and then starts pinging. Since you have multiple sensonst on your relatively long space ship, you can pretty accurately determine the place of a pinged object. You only need to solve the problem, that your own cloak would be pinged as well, but that could be overcome with only pinging in a certain direction. Also add an active ping to your torpedoes, so they can detect cloaked ships when they come close.