Ultimate cloaking/stealth system

[Patrick Degan]

In science ficiton, we've seen a variety of invisibility, camoflauge, or stealth systems in use. Which one would you want for your starship?

• Minbari stealth rig (Babylon 5) —a system which refracts and scatters incoming radiations from active sensor systems and diffuses/scatters outgoing radiation signals from the starship to confuse passive sensors. Does not render the ship invisible, but does make it difficult to track or accurately read it.
• Cloaking device (Star Trek) —a system which renders a ship invisible through the selective bending of light rays. Very power intensive and renders the ship partially sensor-blind. An imperfect system, since it cannot mask subspace/EM radiations, a ship must "run silent" and employ an additional stealth device known as a nullifier core.
• Cloaking device (Star Wars) —a system which uses a powerful gravitic distortion to induce a lensing effect, bending light and other radiations completely around the field perimetre and rendering the ship invisible. Also bends outgoing radiations back upon themselves. Renders a ship completely sensor-blind as a consequence. Also power intensive.
• Chamelion Circuit (Doctor Who) —in TARDISes, a system which alters the external shell of the vehicle to resemble the size and shape of any object to enable the craft to blend in with its surroundings. Relies upon a very complex mathematics to make the system work properly.
• The Somebody Else's Problem Field (The Hitchhikers' Guide To The Galaxy) —a simple system which can run off a torchlight battery and operates on the basic principle of a psychological barrier. Based upon the natural predisposition of the brain to simply ignore anything it does not wish to be concerned with, and thus regard any object masked by an SEP device as "somebody else's problem" and therefore not there in his/her/its eyesight. Just paint your starship (or even a mountain) pink with green and purple polkadots, erect a cheap and simple Somebody Else's Problem Field around it, and nobody will ever notice that the thing is there.

[Shinova]

I don't know much about a few of the listed cloaks, but I think I'll go for the cloaking system the Reman ship in ST: Nemesis uses.

Ship can fire while under cloak. Cloak can be raised/lowered in sections, making certain parts of the ship visible or invisible. And I think it was also said that there was no way it could be detected in the movie, I think.

[HemlockGrey]

I'll chose the S.E.P, thank you very much.

[Exonerate]

The Someone Else's Problem system isn't perfect... If I recall correctly, the ship was finally noticed after Arthur looked around for it a few times. The SW one is rather limited, because it leaves the ship blind, and takes much power. I'd go with the ST one.

[Mr Bean]

Some Elses Problem Field

The kind of cloaking that lets you walk through a used Car Place with a Barrel Full of Money and no one looks twice

[Sea Skimmer]

The Somebody Else's Problem Field seems best, though a Star Wars cloak combine with a sensor stealthed periscope covered by a Star Trek cloak would make for some hot shit.

[Stormbringer]

Somebody Else's Problem Field, cheap, simple and effective.

[data_link]

Well, that depends. Obviously if you're going up against completely automated defenses, the SEP field will be useless. That being the case, I think the best stealth system is the good old RW radar absorbant paint and minimized emissions system. After all, it's the only one that doesn't require unobtanium to build.

[Enlightenment]

A few comments:

Since the Minbari stealth system doesn't make ships invisible it'll only work against enemies that aren't smart enough to figure out the obscure art of building and using visual tracking and targetting sensors. This isn't all that desirable against any enemy with more intelligence than, say, a retarded brick.

Furthermore, 'refracting' the IR signature of a starship to make it isotropic is going to make it stick out like a barn door in all directions rather than like a city in one direction and a building in all the others. This is rather bad if one is facing an enemy with enough skill to understand the obscure art of infrared search and targetting systems. Better hope alll your likely enemies have detection systems less effective than the incoming generation of western fighter aircraft....

In a physically-consistant universe, the Wars cloak will have the nice side effect rendering the ship entirely invulnerable to non-magic weapons fire. A gravity field strong enough to bend light around a ship isn't going to have any problems whatsoever deflecting a missile, nuclear explosion, or even the mass of a planet that happened to get in the ship's way. A ship equipped with this kind of device could drive through a star and not suffer any damage.

The downside to gravitational cloaking is that there's nowhere to dump heat. A ship can't remain cloaked for long without melting. A good way around this problem is to adapt the cloaking device so it can be selectively operated over certain hemispheres of the ship (e.g. those pointing towards the enemy) but left inactive over other areas. These other areas would then be used to radiate heat.


What would I pick? Modified Wars cloak. If the ship was small enough to do planetary landings I'd add a chamelion circuit as an alternate system for use within atmospheres and on the ground.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

A few comments:

Since the Minbari stealth system doesn't make ships invisible it'll only work against enemies that aren't smart enough to figure out the obscure art of building and using visual tracking and targetting sensors. This isn't all that desirable against any enemy with more intelligence than, say, a retarded brick.

Furthermore, 'refracting' the IR signature of a starship to make it isotropic is going to make it stick out like a barn door in all directions rather than like a city in one direction and a building in all the others. This is rather bad if one is facing an enemy with enough skill to understand the obscure art of infrared search and targetting systems. Better hope alll your likely enemies have detection systems less effective than the incoming generation of western fighter aircraft....

In a physically-consistant universe, the Wars cloak will have the nice side effect rendering the ship entirely invulnerable to non-magic weapons fire. A gravity field strong enough to bend light around a ship isn't going to have any problems whatsoever deflecting a missile, nuclear explosion, or even the mass of a planet that happened to get in the ship's way. A ship equipped with this kind of device could drive through a star and not suffer any damage.

The downside to gravitational cloaking is that there's nowhere to dump heat. A ship can't remain cloaked for long without melting. A good way around this problem is to adapt the cloaking device so it can be selectively operated over certain hemispheres of the ship (e.g. those pointing towards the enemy) but left inactive over other areas. These other areas would then be used to radiate heat.


What would I pick? Modified Wars cloak. If the ship was small enough to do planetary landings I'd add a chamelion circuit as an alternate system for use within atmospheres and on the ground.

A gravity field that powerful would probably drag planet-sized masses along with it. Or something.

[Howedar]

Since the Minbari stealth system doesn't make ships invisible it'll only work against enemies that aren't smart enough to figure out the obscure art of building and using visual tracking and targetting sensors. This isn't all that desirable against any enemy with more intelligence than, say, a retarded brick.

I can see a F-117. That doesn't make the F-117's low-observable characteristics entirely without merit. Granted, the Minbari aren't going to be tough to hit at close range, but longer range detection and target acquisition will be hampered.

Furthermore, 'refracting' the IR signature of a starship to make it isotropic is going to make it stick out like a barn door in all directions rather than like a city in one direction and a building in all the others. This is rather bad if one is facing an enemy with enough skill to understand the obscure art of infrared search and targetting systems. Better hope alll your likely enemies have detection systems less effective than the incoming generation of western fighter aircraft....

Radiating everything out in all directions again will be less effective at close range, but more effective at long range, as the sensors must have some detection threshhold beyond which detection is unlikely or impossible. Not perfect, but better than nothing.
[/quote]

[Enlightenment]

I can see a F-117. That doesn't make the F-117's low-observable characteristics entirely without merit. Granted, the Minbari aren't going to be tough to hit at close range, but longer range detection and target acquisition will be hampered.

The optical visibility of stealth aircraft is a big enough problem that they're only used at night--specifically when they can't be seen due to a lack of external illumination. Also in the F-117's favor are cloud decks, the optial horizon, and terrain features. Optical sensors just aren't all that useful for terrestrial antiaircraft work.

In space, however, it's a different story. There's no night, no clouds, and no terrain to hind behind. Given the high specular reflectivity of Minbari ships they're going to be extremely visible to passive optical sensors.

Radiating everything out in all directions again will be less effective at close range, but more effective at long range, as the sensors must have some detection threshhold beyond which detection is unlikely or impossible. Not perfect, but better than nothing.

It's worse than nothing.

The lower detection threshold for a 1998-vintage off-the-shelf commercial CCD sitting behind a 2 meter f/2 telescope is 2.5E-17w/m^2. For a target isotropically radiating a mere 1MW the detection range is in excess of 50 million kilometers.

Use the magic technology not to evenly radiate IR but to radiate heat in a narrow cone and the IR detection range for sensor platforms outside the emission cone drops to zero.

[HRogge]

I would choose a 5th Imperium cloaking device.

- they are available for persons AND ships

- you can see from within the cloak

- you are really invisible, not just a sensor cloak. Even graviton sensors cannot detect you easily

- you can fire out of the cloak

Except a really advanced sensor array nothing helps against a 5th Imperium cloak.

[NecronLord]

I should probably add that the chameleon sircuit reduces mass, so that an object disguised as a telephone box, has the mass, and sensor profile of a telephone box. It [usually] automatically changes itself to something suitible to the landing area. (yes they can be parked in space)

[Warspite]

I'll stay with the SEP field. But if the TARDIS problem is one of mathematics, I'll go also by that one, just have a big enough computer to do all the calculations. (Although, it might seem weird to see a phone box with a LOT of computers attached to it... )

[NecronLord]

They are on the inside, It's partially sentient. The inside is a set size regardless of what it appears as.

[Warspite]

OK, putting aside SEP and Tardis, I'll have to go with the Minbari, although it's not a proper cloak like the other systems, it's more in the ECM category, they don't physically mask the ship (we can see it's THERE).

A side note: what happened to all the development of the ST:VI cloak? Could the Klingon stop trying it again? Or the Romulans?

[Vendetta]

I'll stay with the SEP field. But if the TARDIS problem is one of mathematics, I'll go also by that one, just have a big enough computer to do all the calculations. (Although, it might seem weird to see a phone box with a LOT of computers attached to it... )

No problem, a Tardis' internal volume is in no way linked to it's external dimensions.

[God Emperor]

I don't know to much about the ones you said, but i like the one's in dune. The ship's are called noships, don't know why, well what it does is absorb all encoming radiation, and gives out the same amount of radiation as its surronding area.

[Pu-239]

Th noship cloak also acts like a phase cloak. It can also shoot when cloaked

[Pu-239]

Correction- I think it only has limited phase cloak abilities, probably applying only to the harkonnen hideout and similar installations

[Evil Sadistic Bastard]

[*]The Somebody Else's Problem Field (The Hitchhikers' Guide To The Galaxy) —a simple system which can run off a torchlight battery and operates on the basic principle of a psychological barrier. Based upon the natural predisposition of the brain to simply ignore anything it does not wish to be concerned with, and thus regard any object masked by an SEP device as "somebody else's problem" and therefore not there in his/her/its eyesight. Just paint your starship (or even a mountain) pink with green and purple polkadots, erect a cheap and simple Somebody Else's Problem Field around it, and nobody will ever notice that the thing is there.
[/list]

Basically anything that makes them ignore your ship is the best.