The Transphotonic Cloaking Device




The What?

The Transphotonic Cloaking Device, or TCD for short, is the Independence Fleet, Special Operation Division's newest technology. Still somewhat experimental and untested in a variety of ships, it's not exactly a cloaking device, at least not in the traditional sense. For, as many know, the Federation is not allowed to use cloaking devices. Before I get into specifics on how the TCD works, let me explain why it was created.


Background

The Treaty of Algeron, signed in 2311, was a peace accord established between the Federation and the Romulan Star Empire following the Tomed Incident, an "incident" which cost the Federation thousands of lives. The treaty re-established the Romulan-Federation neutral zone with the condition that violation of the neutral zone by either side without adequate notification would be considered an act of war. It also established a forbiddance of the Federation from developing or using cloaking device technology in its spacecraft. Since then the Romulans have allowed only one Federation ship (the U.S.S. Defiant, before it was destroyed) to have and use a cloaking device, but only while in the Gamma quadrent and if either in protection of the Alpha Quadrent or moving against the Dominion.



Wait, just what is a cloaking device?

Cloaking devices have always had one basic concept in common: They hide the object being cloaked from sight by bending all light around whatever is being cloaked. In most cases cloaking devices also render the object undetectable by almost any direct means (specifically sensors) short of physical contact with the object. A few cloaking devices can even hide an object from physical reality by "phasing," which alters the object's atomic structure to be slightly out of phase with normal matter. Such a phase cloak is currently under development by the Romulan Empire. The Federation actually succeeded in creating such a device years ago, blatently breaking the treaty. However, its development had been kept secret from the rest of the Federation by one of its Admirals. When the device, and covertness, had been uncovered the Federation immediately took steps to prevent problems with the Romulans, including the destruction of the device (so as to keep the Romulans from having. If we can't have it, why should we give it to them?).


What the TCD does

The Transphotonic Cloaking Device takes advantage of a loophole in the Treaty of Algeron: that a cloaking device hides and object from sight. It is somewhat misleading to have the word "cloaking" in the name of the TCD, and will undoubtedly cause problems at some point. The TCD does not actually hide anything from "sight". Instead of bending light, and thus cloaking an object, the TCD only hides an object from subspace detection (ie.- Ship Sensors). Therefore, anything under the effects of the TCD is still completely visable to the naked eye, but completely hidden from any other means of detection (again, other than physical contact).


How the TCD works

As with many things, the TCD deals with subspace. In order to travel faster than the speed of light, communications are set through subspace, sensors scan through subspace, even ships use warp fields to physically travel through subspace. So instead of bending light to hide objects from view, the TCD uses photonic principles to bend subspace to hide objects from detection. This means that such an object is still visable by sub-light means. Ie.- anything that operates using slower that light speed dectection can see an object under the effects of a TCD. This does mean that if anyone discovers how the TCD works, they can try to modify their sensors to operate like eyes that can see in all directions. However, if that is done, tactical advantage still lies with a ship under the effects of the TCD as the Picard Manuever is made usable and impossible to defend against.


That's a heck of a loophole...

Yes, it is. But until the Romulans call us on it, (and they have to see it first to know, everything else is just hearsay) we're going to keep it around.

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