Cloaking Device Operating Procedures and Countermeasures

Cloaks must trap internally generated radiation in order to keep the presence of the ship a secret. There are strict limits to the rate of energy generation on a cloaked ship. If it does not dump energy to its environment in any form other than its plasma exhaust, we can determine that a cloaked ship must be generating the same amount of power as it dumps into its environment in the form of plasma, or it would rapidly heat up inside its cloak, and be destroyed in short order.

In order to function, a cloaking device needs to be tied into a ship's deflector shield grid. Along with high power consumption, this is why a cloaking device and a ship's shields cannot be raised at the same time.

Cloaks are still vulnerable to detection from subspace listening posts, gravitic sensors, and tachyon detection grids. Their vulnerability to subspace listening posts because they still “leak” enough subspace energy to be detected even at many light years' range. Their vulnerability to gravitic sensors because they have no way of concealing the space-time distortion created by their presence. Their vulnerability to the tachyon detection grids because they cannot bend fabric of space-time itself around the ship, as is commonly assumed (because tachyons would be bound to follow the lines of space-time just like anything else).

A magnetic field inside a cloaking device can be detected from outside. Under normal conditions, the movement of charged matter inside the ship must be precisely balanced so that no net magnetic field is formed.

The phase-cloak is a small cylindrical device which can be held in one hand. This makes it similar in size and appearance to the Romulan cloaking device stolen by Kirk. Pressman desperately wanted to find the prototype, and he refused to let Picard destroy the asteroid to keep the Romulans from getting it. This indicates that the designs were never stored anywhere but the Pegasus, so Pressman had to acquire the prototype, or the secret development that allowed their device to work while competing Romulan and Klingon efforts failed would have been lost. There is a “phasing rate” associated with this type of device, and that rate appears to be a continuously variable quantity which must exceed a certain threshold to let them travel through solid rock. This leads to some obvious questions 1. How much higher can their “phasing rate” go? 2. How much higher would it have to go, in order to pass through a much denser substance such as lead or depleted uranium? 3. How much higher would it have to go in order to pass through shields? Can it pass through shields at all? The prototype was destroyed and we already know that there were no other records kept of its design.

Cloaking devices are useless in emission nebulae. Emission nebulae are large gaseous objects which are made to glow by some sort of hot celestial object in their midst such as a large star. They glow because their gas density is much higher than normal interstellar gas, and is similar to the gas density of Earth's ionosphere (the extreme upper atmosphere where the Aurora Borealis occurs). The ions in the nebula are kept in a state of excitation by ambient electromagnetic radiation, and this makes the cloak totally useless.

CLOAKING DEVICE
Cloaking device, a type of "stealth" technology, emit an energy field which bends light and other energy phenomena around a cloaked ship, but not gravity, subspace or other space-time effects, rendering it invisible to both the naked eye and most sensors.

Cloaks require enormous amounts of power, so much so that a ship cannot use many other systems, including shields, transporters, active sensors, and weapons systems, while a cloak is on. The ship can, however, use its communication devices and passive sensor systems, without revealing its location to other ships. Cloaking devices work in atmospheres, but may be effectively useless due to the presence of atmospheric particulates and the like.

CLOAKING AND DECLOAKING IN COMBAT
Since a ship cannot use shields or weapons with an active cloak, it has to decloak if it wants to attack. When it does so, there's typically a brief delay (a second or two at most) between when it decloaks and when its shields activate. This delay provides the cloaked ship's opponent with a chance to attack it while it's vulnerable—if the opponent's quick enough on the trigger.
- -To take advantage of the opportunity to attack a decloaking ship in its moment of vulnerability, a ship must detect what's happening in time; this requires successful Challenging Shipboard Sensors Systems. If they succeed, the ship may attack the cloaked ship as it decloaks, but with a penalty due to the split-second timing involved. The ship may not apply bonuses from improved tactical systems, Shipboard Sensors Systems, Starship Tactics or from Maneuvering. If the attack hits the decloaking ship, it cannot apply its shields to reduce the damage, only its Hull Resistance.
- -When a ship decides to engage its cloak and escape a battle, another ship can hit the cloaking ship just as it drops its shields and cloaks with a Challenging Shipboard Sensors Systems. The same rules apply as for attacking decloaking ships, except that BONUSES DO APPLY from improved tactical systems, Shipboard Sensors Systems, Starship Tactics and from Maneuvering. If the attack hits the decloaking ship, it cannot apply its shields to reduce the damage, only its Hull Resistance.
- -The order of battle may determine whether another ship can attack a cloaking or decloaking ship. A clever cloaking device operator will wait until he achieves initiative to cloak. Unless combat has already begun, the cloaking device operator on a decloaking ship cannot take advantage of this tactic; standard rules for targeting his ship as it decloaks apply.

RANDOM FIRE
If a ship suspects that there's a cloaked ship in the vicinity, it can always try taking shots in random directions, hoping to get lucky and hit the cloaked (and thus virtually defenseless) vessel. The Tactical Officer utilizes Shipboard Tactical Systems to hit the target for volley of random fire, but he only has even a remote chance to hit if the ship fires in the right general direction. The cloaked ship's modifiers for evasive maneuvers apply, but the attacking ship does not receive bonuses for Shipboard Sensors Systems, improved Tactical Systems or maneuvering. Random Fire works best with large area effect attacks or sweeping attacks (phasers on continuous fire sweeping broad arcs), but even then, they are best for determining where the ship is or shutting down their cloak rather that actually hitting the ship.

CLOAKS AND TRANSPORTERS
A cloaked ship cannot use transporters; the cloaking device uses too much power, and in any event the transporter matter stream would instantly pinpoint the ship's location to any other ship looking for it. A few Klingon vessels have the ability to use transporters while cloaked if the ship does nothing else—it cannot move, use communications, or do anything else but sit there in space, cloaked and transporting someone to or from the ship. Using the transporter automatically indicates to any other vessel within sensor range where the ship is.

DETECTING CLOAKED SHIPS
Cloaks are merely a form of electronic warfare. The cloaked ship tries to hide itself and maneuver to gain a tactical advantage, while the ships seeking it strain desperately with all their sensors and other resources to locate the cloaked vessel in time to prevent it from accomplishing its mission. It's a dangerous game of cat and mouse in space, one that's constantly evolving as both cloaks and sensors improve. Through the years, clever Starfleet personnel have learned many different ways to detect a cloaked vessel. These include:

ANTIPROTON BEAM
A ship can generate an antiproton beam to detect a cloaked vessel. This requires a successful Moderate Shipboard Deflector Systems and expenditure of Power. Success means the beam penetrates the target's cloak to detect the vessel.

TACHYON SCANNER
A long-range tachyon scan can penetrate a cloak in the same way. Properly configuring the tachyon scanner to detect the cloaked ship requires 3 minutes and a successful Moderate Shipboard Sensors Systems. If a cloaked vessel is hiding in a nebula, a tachyon scan of that nebula will locate the cloaked ship with Routine Shipboard Sensors Systems. Adjusting the cloak’s resonance frequency can partially counteract the antiproton beam scanning method, but it requires guessing of the correct frequency or knowledge of the scanning parties operating procedures regarding antiproton beam scanning.

EMISSION NEBULAE
Cloaking devices cannot function in emission nebula, which is a source of electromagnetic radiation. Difficult Shipboard Cloaking Device Systems allows one to function in that environment, and the ship must reset every hour to maintain the cloak. If a cloaked vessel is hiding in a nebula, a tachyon scan of that nebula will locate the cloaked ship with Routine Shipboard Sensors Systems regardless.

IONIZATION DISTURBANCES
Under certain circumstances, particularly in crowded systems near interstellar dust, atmospheric conditions, interplanetary or asteroidal material or stellar radiation/plasma, cloaked ships cause ionization disturbances in the space around them. When this occurs, another ship can detect it with Moderate Shipboard Sensors Systems.

TACHYON DETECTION GRID
Given a sufficient number of ships (at least 12) or orbital platforms or similar fixed facilities, a tachyon detection grid—a network of tachyon beams linking all the ships or platforms—can easily detect any cloaked vessel which passes through it. If the grid sweeps over a cloaked ship, or the cloaked ship tries to pass through it, the ships or facilities in the grid can detect it with a Routine Shipboard Sensors Systems.

GRAVITIC SENSOR NET
A gravitic sensor net operates in a similar manner and monitors gravitic disturbances to expose cloaked objects.

TETRYON EMISSIONS
Romulan ships are powered by artificial quantum singularity drives which emit tetryons which are difficult to control. In some cases, the cloak does not cover the tetryon emissions sufficiently to hide the ship completely. Another ship can detect them with a Routine Shipboard Sensors Systems.

Cloak Countermeasure Notes:
- -Early versions and primitive versions of the cloak allow a starship to pick up a blip on motion tracking sensors. This blip is not accurate enough for targeting of weapons and only appeared when the vessel moved, but it is enough to locate the enemy vessel. Later advanced models removed the problem, but the primitive cloaks are still onboard many starships.
- -Intermediate versions of the cloak have visible energy distortions were detectable while cloaked and prior to decloaking and could be tracked via the plasma exhaust of the cloaked ship.
- -Cloaked ships radiate a slight subspace variance at warp speeds. These variances vanish once the vessel drops out of warp. If a cloaked ship exceeds its maximum propulsion capacity, it will not be able to fully cloak, and will appear on navigational sensors as a sensor echo.
- -Modern modified cloaks, as long as they travelled under the speed of warp 6, their warp signatures would remain undetected, even while under cloak. This modification causes them to appear as high concentrations of tetryon particles, which should be monitored.
- -Due to the enormous amount of power required to generate a cloaking field, there is by and large not enough power available to also power the weapons and shields. There have been several times when advances in cloaking technology have rendered this untrue. In 2293, the Klingons developed a prototype bird-of-prey capable of firing when cloaked. This advance carries the limitation that its cloak can be tracked by its plasma exhaust using mundane sensors for analyzing gaseous anomalies.
- -In 2379, the Reman Warbird Scimitar employed a new type of cloaking device that allowed the ship to fire weapons and use shields while cloaked. The device didn't give off any tachyon emissions or residual antiprotons, making the Scimitar completely undetectable while cloaked. Only through repeated blind targeting barrages of phasers and torpedoes could the ship be detected.
- -The cloaking device strategically seems to be no more than a short term inconvenience, soon able to be detected and compensated for. A cloaked vessel is only useful to someone practicing the "politics of obstruction and extortion". They may not be capable of asserting control over a particular patch of water/space, but they are still useful for many missions, including defense of your own territory, scouting/surveillance and supporting attacks by other types of ships against the enemy. As soon as the ship decloaks, it is capable of performing all the same kinds of missions as a "regular" starship, but if it depends on the cloak for its tactical advantage, it carries the same tactical limitations as a submarine. A submarine that surfaces is on the quite helpless against a surface ship, making it unable to assert control of the ocean around it.