Freedom of Speech by Norman Rockwell and referencing TNG s7e12 "The Pegasus"
this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2025
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Why?
Phase tech that would allow them to purposefully go through matter? Sure. But the cloak part isn't really necessary when the whole purpose is to explore. It's useful for combat but Starfleet actively tries to avoid battle as much as possible. Having invisible weapons or starbases just feels like it goes against what the Federation stands for. To not hide in shadows but stand up and speak truth.
To me anyway
Avoiding combat is a lot easier when you’re undetected.
Which doesn't line up with anything that Starfleet stands for. Either they're going cloaked literally all the time and never contacting any outside races, which is antithetical to everything that the United Federation of Planets does, or you're only using it in hotzones that Starfleet actively tries to avoid in the first place. But you're also forgetting about the major risk of running cloaked. If someone does detect you, your intentions are going to seem immediately suspect. You're not going to come off like some noble, space-faring organization that strives for the best in everyone if you're hiding from people and spying on them before revealing yourself.
So is combat
Admittedly, there aren't a lot of "honorable" uses for it. Even in Insurrection, the Federation abused cloaking tech on Ba'ku in their attempt to relocate the population. Observation with the intent to not interfere would benefit from cloaking availability. Not much else coming to mind.
Yeah, that's all I've got too. Research/study of Pre-warp civilizations is literally the only thing that I can think of but Heisenberg says "Good fuckin' luck with that one" too. Maybe the cloak could break it.
Was there a Breaking Bad / Star Trek Disco crossover episode? Who's Heisenberg?
Okay that got me. I'm referencing the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and, more specifically, the Observer Effect which says that the study of something will inherently change it. Granted, that applies to physics in that case but it's still used in reference to studying various other things as there is no way to study something without leaving a footprint of some kind. That footprint alone is enough to vary the study or, as Starfleet is afraid of with Pre-Warp civilizations, vary the thing you're studying.
Oh gotcha. Yeah wasn't even thinking about that. Good joke.
I should have realized, since there's an old joke in my family my parents would make that when you forgot to turn on the burner, you were cooking with the Heisenberg Uncertainty Effect. Something about it being possible for all the atoms of the food to spontaneously change energy states, just incredibly unlikely.
Oh that's a far better joke.... I'm stealing that one. That's fantastic.
Cloaking for pre- first-contact missions makes a ton of sense. I think if the enterprise showed up in orbit today, we’d notice.
But if it is outlawed by treaty, that’s that.
Phasing just seems like really good shields to me—defensive, but not covert. How many times would the Enterprise been able to just outright avoid entire story lines if it couldn’t be touched? Not even confrontational issues—like when asteroid dust introduced metal-eating parasites, that just wouldn’t have happened.
Although, just like any advantage, even a defensive advantage like phasing could be used for offensive purposes (invasion, etc) unless an equal counter to it is developed.
Thinking about it further, you’d almost assume any people with the technology of faster than light travel would have had to develop some form of phasing tech prior to the FTL stuff…
Cloaks strike me as primarily defensive tech with potential offenses strategies
Klingons use it almost exclusively as an offensive technology.
Romulans use it to misinform and to be the boogy-man.
These aren't Starfleet or Federation ideals.
But wouldn't it also help with the Prime Directive?
They use holograms for ground outposts, and you can't really see a ship in orbit easily.
The use case with the prime directive is rather limited.
If we had the Enterprise NCC 1701, no bloody A, B, C, or D in orbit, you would be able to see it with the naked eye. The thing is 288 m long. Even in geosynchronous orbit you'd still be barely able to see it.
If you're referring to pretty much any of the classes of starships once TNG starts, those ships would be clearly visible in a standard low to high orbit.
That's understandable for civilizations up to industrial age, but once they start getting prewarp, hiding in orbit would get more and more difficult.all the satellites in orbit, telescopes and scanners would likely pick up something
This is why I added the qualifier easily to that sentence.
Pre warp civilizations aren't always going to be able to do those things.
the big shields are used primarily in combat. thus they are offensive technology.
Shields are, and always have been defensive. Weapons are offensive.
the shield that displaces light is an offensive technology
And starfleet could put it on ships designed to rescue refugees in hostile territory.
yeah! they could kill all the people displacing those refugees the first place without the refugees even knowing about their benefactors.